BOOKS  AND  CULTURE 
BY  HAMILTON  WRIGHT 
MABIE 


NEW  YORK:  PUBLISHED  BY 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 
MDCCCXCVI 


Copyright,  1896, 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY. 


JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE,  U.S.A. 


To 
EDMUND    CLARENCE    STEDMAN 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
CHAPTER 

I.   MATERIAL  AND  METHOD     .     .     • 

II.    TIME  AND  PLACE 2O 

III.  MEDITATION  AND  IMAGINATION     .  34 

IV.  THE  FIRST  DELIGHT      ....  5 l 
V.   THE  FEELING  FOR  LITERATURE     .  63 

VI.   THE  BOOKS  OF  LIFE      ....  74 

VII.   FROM  THE  BOOK  TO  THE  READER  85 

VIII.   BY  WAY  OF  ILLUSTRATION       .     .  95 

IX.   PERSONALITY IO9 

X.   LIBERATION  THROUGH  IDEAS  .      .  121 

XI.   THE  LOGIC  OF  FREE  LIFE  .      .      .  1 3  2 

•XII.   THE  IMAGINATION H3 

XIII.  BREADTH  OF  LIFE J54 

XIV.  RACIAL  EXPRESSION     .  .      .     .     •  *65 
XV. .  FRESHNESS  OF  FEELING  .      .     .      .  i?4' 


Contents 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 


XVI.   LIBERATION  FROM  ONE'S  TIME  185 

XVII.   LIBERATION  FROM  ONE'S  PLACE  195 

XVIII.   THE  UNCONSCIOUS  ELEMENT      .  204 

XIX.   THE  TEACHING  OF  TRAGEDY      .  217 

XX.   THE     CULTURE     ELEMENT     IN 

FICTION 229 

XXI.   CULTURE  THROUGH  ACTION       .  239 

XXII.   THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  IDEALISM  250 

XXIII.  THE  VISION  OF  PERFECTION  .      .  260 

XXIV.  RETROSPECT 271 


Chapter  I. 
Material  and  Method. 

TF  the  writer  who  ventures  to  say 
something  more  about  books 
and  their  uses  is  wise,  he  will  not 
begin  with  an  apology ;  for  he  will 
know  that,  despite  all  that  has  been 
said  and  written  on  this  engrossing 
theme,  the  interest  of  books  is  in 
exhaustible,  and  that  there  is  always 
a  new  constituency  to  read  them. 
So  rich  is  the  vitality  of  the  great 
books  of  the  world  that  men  are 
never  done  with  them ;  not  only 
does  each  new  generation  read  them, 
but  it  is  compelled  to  form  some 
judgment  of  them.  In  this  way 
7 


Material  and  Method. 

Homer,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Goethe, 
and  their  fellow-artists,  are  always 
coming  into  the  open  court  of  pub 
lic  opinion,  and  the  estimate  in 
which  they  are  held  is  valuable 
chiefly  as  affording  material  for  a 
judgment  of  the  generation  which 
forms  it.  An  age  which  understands 
and  honours  creative  artists  must 
have  a  certain  breadth  of  view  and 
energy  of  spirit ;  an  age  which  fails 
to  recognise  their  significance  fails  to 
recognise  the  range  and  splendour 
of  life,  and  has,  therefore,  a  certain 
inferiority. 

We  cannot  get  away  from  the 
great  books  of  the  world,  because 
they  preserve  and  interpret  the  life 
of  the  world;  they  are  inexhaustible, 
because,  being  vitally  conceived, 
they  need  the  commentary  of  that 
wide  experience  which  we  call  history 
8 


Material  and  Method. 

to  bring  out  the  full  meaning  of  the 
text ;  they  are  our  perpetual  teach 
ers,  because  they  are  the  most  com 
plete  expressions,  in  that  concrete 
form  which  we  call  art,  of  the 
thoughts,  acts,  dispositions,  and  pas 
sions  of  humanity.  There  is  no 
getting  to  the  bottom  of  Shake 
speare,  for  instance,  or  to  the  end  of 
his  possibilities  of  enriching  and  in 
teresting  us,  because  he  deals  habit 
ually  with  that  primary  substance 
of  human  life  which  remains  sub 
stantially  unchanged  through  all  the 
mutations  of  racial,  national,  and 
personal  condition,  and  which  is  al 
ways,  and  for  all  men,  the  object  of 
supreme  interest.  Time,  which  is 
the  relentless  enemy  of  all  that  is 
partial  and  provisional,  is  the  friend 
of  Shakespeare,  because  it  continu 
ally  brings  to  the  student  of  his 
9 


Material  and  Method. 

work  illustration  and  confirmation 
of  its  truth.  There  are  many  things 
in  his  plays  which  are  more  intel 
ligible  and  significant  to  us  than  they 
were  to  the  men  who  heard  their 
musical  cadence  on  the  rude  Eliza 
bethan  stage,  because  the  ripening  of 
experience  has  given  the  prophetic 
thought  an  historical  demonstration  ; 
and  there  are  truths  in  these  plays 
which  will  be  read  with  clearer  eyes 
by  the  men  of  the  next  century  than 
they  are  now  read  by  us. 

It  is  this  prophetic  quality  in  the 
books  of  power  which  silently  moves 
them  forward  with  the  inaudible  ad 
vance  of  the  successive  files  in  the 
ranks  of  the  generations,  and  which 
makes  them  contemporary  with  each 
generation.  For  while  the  mediaeval 
frame-work  upon  which  Dante  con 
structed  the  c<  Divine  Comedy  "  be- 
10 


Material  and  Method. 

comes  obsolete,  the  fundamental 
thought  of  the  poet  about  human 
souls  and  the  identity  of  the  deed 
and  its  result  not  only  remains  true 
to  experience  but  has  received  the 
most  impressive  confirmation  from 
subsequent  history  and  from  psy 
chology. 

It  is  as  impossible,  therefore,  to 
get  away  from  the  books  of  power  as 
from  the  stars  ;  every  new  generation 
must  make  acquaintance  with  them, 
because  they  are  as  much  a  part  of 
that  order  of  things  which  forms  the 
background  of  human  life  as  nature 
itself.  With  every  intelligent  man 
or  woman  the  question  is  not,  "  Shall 
I  take  account  of  them  ?  "  but  "  How 
shall  I  get  the  most  and  the  best 
out  of  them  for  my  enrichment  and 
guidance  ?  " 

It  is  with  the  hope  of  assisting 
ii 


Material  and  Method. 

some  readers  and  students  of  books, 
and  especially  those  who  are  at  the 
beginning  of  the  ardours,  the  de 
lights,  and  the  perplexities  of  the 
book-lover,  that  these  chapters  are 
undertaken.  They  assume  nothing 
on  the  part  of  the  reader  but  a  de 
sire  to  know  the  best  that  has  been 
written ;  they  promise  nothing  on 
the  part  of  the  writer  but  a  frank 
and  familiar  use  of  experience  in  a 
pursuit  which  makes  it  possible  for 
the  individual  life  to  learn  the  les 
sons  which  universal  life  has  learned, 
and  to  piece  out  its  limited  personal 
experience  with  the  experience  of 
humanity.  One  who  loves  books, 
like  one  who  loves  a  particular  bit 
of  a  country,  is  always  eager  to  make 
others  see  what  he  sees  ;  that  there 
have  been  other  lovers  of  books  and 
views  before  him  does  not  put  him 


12 


Material  and  Method. 

in  an  apologetic  mood.  There  can 
not  be  too  many  lovers  of  the  best 
things  in  these  pessimistic,  days, 
when  to  have  the  power  of  loving 
anything  is  beginning  to  be  a  great 
and  rare  gift. 

The  wor5  love  in  this  connection 
is  significant  of  a  very  definite  atti- 
•Jude  toward  books,  — an  attitude  not 
uncritical,  since  it  is  love  of  the  best 
only,  but  an  attitude  which  implies 
more  intimacy  and  receptivity  than 
the  purely  critical  temper  makes  pos 
sible  ;  an  attitude,  moreover,  which 
expects  and  invites  something  more 
than  instruction  or  entertainment,  — 
both  valuable,  wholesome,  and  neces 
sary,  and  yet  neither  descriptive  of 
the  richest  function  which  the  book 
fulfils  to  the  reader.  To  love  a  book 
is  to  invite  an  intimacy  with  it  which 
opens  the  way  to  its  heart.  One  of 
13 


Material  and  Method. 

the  wisest  of  modern  readers  has  said 
that  the  most  important  character- 
istio  of  the  real  critic  —  the  man  who 
penetrates  the  secret  of  a  work  of 
art —  is  the  ability  to  admire  greatly; 
and  there  is  but  a  short  step  between 
admiration  and  love.  And  as  if  to 
emphasise  the  value  of  a  quality  so 
rare  among  critics,  the  same  wise 
reader,  who  was  also  the  greatest 
writer  of  modern  times,  says  also 
that  fc  where  keen  perception  unites 
with  good  will  and  love,  it  gets  at 
the  heart  of  man  and  the  world ; 
nay,  it  may  hope  to  reach  the  high 
est  goal  of  all."  To  get  at  the  heart 
of  that  knowledge,  life,  and  beauty 
which  are  stored  in  books  is  surely 
one  way  of  reaching  the  highest 
goal. 

That  goal,   in  Goethe's    thought, 
was    the    complete    development    of 
14 


Material  and  Method. 

the  individual  life  through  thought, 
feeling,  and  action,  —  an  aim  often 
misunderstood,  but  which,  seen  on 
all  sides,  is  certainly  the  very  highest 
disclosed  to  the  human  spirit.  And 
the  method  of  attaining  this  result 
was  the  process,  also  often  and  widely 
misunderstood,  of  culture.  This 
word  carries  with  it  the  implication 
of  natural,  vital  growth,  but  it  has 
been  confused  with  an  artificial,  me 
chanical  process,  supposed  to  be 
practised  as  a  kind  of  esoteric  cult 
by  a  small  group  of  people  who  hold 
themselves  apart  from  common 
human  experiences  and  fellowships. 
Mr.  Symonds,  concerning  whose 
representative  character  as  a  man  of 
culture  there  is  no  difference  of  opin 
ion,  said  that  he  had  read  with  some 
care  the  newspaper  accounts  of  his 
"culture/1  and  that,  so  far  as  he 
15 


Material  and  Method. 

could  gather,  his  newspaper  critics 
held  the  opinion  that  culture  is  a 
kind  of  knapsack  which  a  man  straps 
on  his  back,  and  in  which  he  places  a 
vast  amount  of  information,  gathered, 
more  or  less  at  random,  in  all  parts 
of  the  world.  There  was,  of  course, 
a  touch  of  humour  in  Mr.  Symonds's 
description  of  the  newspaper  concep 
tion  of  culture ;  but  it  is  certainly 
true  that  culture  has  been  regarded 
by  a  great  many  people  either  as  a 
kind  of  intellectual  refinement,  so 
highly  specialised  as  to  verge  on  fas 
tidiousness,  or  as  a  large  accumula 
tion  of  miscellaneous  information. 

Now,  the  process  of  culture  is 
an  unfolding  and  enrichment  of  the 
human  spirit  by  conforming  to  the 
laws  of  its  own  growth ;  and  the  re 
sult  is  a  broad,  rich,  free  human  life. 
Culture  is  never  quantity,  it  is  al- 
16 


Material  and  Method. 

ways  quality^  of  knowledge ;  it  is 
never  an  extension  of  ourselves  by 
additions  from  without,  it  is  always 
enlargement  of  ourselves  by  develop 
ment  from  within  ;  it  is  never  some 
thing  acquired,  it  is  always  some 
thing  possessed  ;  it  is  never  a  result 
of  accumulation,  it  is  always  a  result 
of  growth.  That  which  characterises 
the  man  of  culture  is  not  the  extent 
of  his  information,  but  the  quality 
of  his  mind ;  it  is  not  the  mass  of 
things  he  knows,  but  the  sanity,  the 
ripeness,  the  soundness  of  his  nature. 
A  man  may  have  great  knowledge 
and  remain  uncultivated  ;  a  man  may 
have  comparatively  limited  knowl 
edge  and  be  genuinely  cultivated. 
There  have  been  famous  scholars 
who  have  remained  crude,  unripe, 
inharmonious  in  their  intellectual 
life,  and  there  have  been  men  of 


Material  and  Method. 

small  scholarship  who  have  found  all 
the  fruits  of  culture.  The  man  of 
culture  is  he  who  has  so  absorbed 
what  he  knows  that  it  is  part  of 
himself.  His  knowledge  has  not 
only  enriched  specific  faculties,  it 
has  enriched  him ;  his  entire  na 
ture  has  come  to  ripe  and  sound 
maturity. 

This  personal  enrichment  is  the 
very  highest  and  finest  result  of  in 
timacy  with  books ;  compared  with 
it  the  instruction,  information,  re 
freshment,  and  entertainment  which 
books  afford  are  of  secondary  im 
portance.  The  great  service  they 
render  us  —  the  greatest  service  that 
can  be  rendered  us  —  is  the  enlarge 
ment,  enrichment,  and  unfolding  of 
ourselves;  they  nourish  and  develop 
that  mysterious  personality  which 
lies  behind  all  thought,  feeling,  and 
18 


Material  and  Method. 

action ;  that  central  force  within  us 
which  feeds  the  specific  activities 
through  which  we  give  out  ourselves 
to  the  world,  and,  in  giving,  find  and 
recover  ourselves. 


Chapter  II. 

Time  and  Place. 

'T'O  get  at  the  heart  of  Shakes 
peare's  plays,  and  to  secure 
for  ourselves*  the  material  and  the 
development  of  culture  which  are 
contained  in  them,  is  not  the  work 
of  a  day  or  of  a  year;  it  is  the  work 
and  the  joy  of  a  lifetime.  There  is 
no  royal  road  to  the  harmonious  un 
folding  of  the  human  spirit ;  there 
is  a  choice  of  methods,  but  there  are 
no  "short  cuts."  No  man  can  seize 
the  fruits  of  culture  prematurely ; 
they  are  not  to  be  had  by  pulling 
down  the  boughs  of  the  tree  of 
knowledge,  so  that  he  who  runs 

20 


Time  and  Place. 

may  pluck  as  he  pleases.  Culture 
is  not  to  be  had  by  programme,  by 
limited  courses  of  reading,  by  cor 
respondence,  or  by  following  short 
prescribed  lines  of  home  study. 
These  are  all  good  in  their  degree 
of  thoroughness  of  method  and  worth 
of  standards,  but  they  are  impotent 
to  impart  an  enrichment  which  is 
below  and  beyond  mere  acquirement. 
Because  culture  is  not  knowledge  but 
wisdom,  not  quantity  of  learning 
but  quality,  not  mass  of  informa 
tion  but  ripeness  and  soundness  of 
temper,  spirit,  and  nature,  time  is 
an  essential  element  in  the  process 
of  securing  it.  A  man  may  acquire 
information  with  great  rapidity,  but 
no  man  can  hasten  his  growth.  If 
the  fruit  is  forced,  the  flavour  is  lost. 
To  get  into  the  secret  of  Shake 
speare,  therefore,  one  must  take 


21 


Time  and  Place. 

time.      One    must    grow    into    that 
secret. 

This  does  not  mean,  however, 
that  the  best  things  to  be  gotten 
out  of  books  are  reserved  for  people 
of  leisure  ;  on  the  contrary,  they  are 
oftenest  possessed  by  those  whose 
labours  are  many  and  whose  leisure 
is  limited.  One  may  give  his  whole 
life  to  the  pursuit  of  this  kind  of 
excellence,  but  one  does  not  need  to 
give  his  whole  time  to  it.  Culture 
is  cumulative;  it  grows  steadily  in 
the  man  who  takes  the  fruitful  atti 
tude  toward  life  and  art ;  it  is  secured 
by  the  clear  purpose  which  so  utilises 
all  the  spare  minutes  that  they  prac 
tically  constitute  an  unbroken  dura 
tion  of  time.  James  Smetham,  the 
English  artist,  feeling  keenly  the  im 
perfections  of  his  training,  formulated 
a  plan  of  study  combining  art,  litera- 

22 


Time  and  Place. 

ture,  and  the  religious  life,  and  de 
voted  twenty-five  years  to  working 
it  out.  Goethe  spent  more  than 
sixty  years  in  the  process  of  devel 
oping  himself  harmoniously  on  all 
sides ;  and  few  men  have  wasted  less 
time  than  he.  And  yet  in  the  case 
of  each  of  these  rigorous  and  faithful 
students  there  were  other,  and,  for 
long  periods,  more  engrossing  occu 
pations.  Any  one  who  knows  men 
widely  will  recall  those  whose  persist 
ent  utilisation  of  the  odds  and  ends 
of  time,  which  many  people  regard  as 
of  too  little  value  to  save  by  using, 
has  given  their  minds  and  their 
lives  that  peculiar  distinction  of  taste, 
manner,  and  speech  which  belong  to 
genuine  culture. 

It    is    not    wealth     of    time,    but 
what  Mr.  Gladstone  has  aptly  called 
"  thrift  of  time,"  which  brings  ripe- 
23 


Time  and  Place. 

ness  of  mind  within  reach  of  the 
great  mass  of  men  and  women.  The 
man  who  has  learned  the  value  of 
five  minutes  has  gone  a  long  way 
toward  making  himself  a  master  of 
life  and  its  arts.  "The  thrift  of 
time/*  says  the  English  statesman, 
cc  will  repay  in  after  life  with  a 
usury  of  profit  beyond  your  most 
sanguine  dreams,  and  waste  of  it 
will  make  you  dwindle  alike  in  in 
tellectual  and  moral  stature  beyond 
your  darkest  reckoning."  And  Mat 
thew  Arnold  has  put  the  same  truth 
into  words  which  touch  the  subject 
in  hand  still  more  closely:  "  The 
plea  that  this  or  that  man  has  no 
time  for  culture  will  vanish  as  soon 
as  we  desire  culture  so  much  that  we 
begin  to  examine  seriously  into  our 
present  use  of  time."  It  is  no  ex 
aggeration  to  say  that  the  mass  of 
24 


Time  and  Place. 

men  give  to  unplanned  and  desultory 
reading  of  books  and  newspapers  an 
amount  of  time  which,  if  intelligently 
and  thoughtfully  given  to  the  best 
books,  would  secure,  in  the  long 
run,  the  best  fruits  of  culture. 

There  is  no  magic  about  this 
process  of  enriching  one's  self  by 
absorbing  the  best  books ;  it  is 
simply  a  matter  of  sound  habits 
patiently  formed  and  persistently 
kept  up.  Making  the  most  of  one's 
time  is  the  first  of  these  habits ;  uti 
lising  the  spare  hours,  the  unem 
ployed  minutes,  no  less  than  those 
longer  periods  which  the  more  fortu 
nate  enjoy.  To  "take  time  by  the 
forelock  "  in  this  way,  however,  one 
one  must  have  his  book  at  hand 
when  the  precious  minute  arrives. 
There  must  be  no  fumbling  for  the 
right  volume ;  no  waste  of  time 
25 


Time  and  Place. 

because  one  is  uncertain  what  to 
take  up  next.  The  waste  of  oppor 
tunity  which  leaves  so  many  people 
intellectually  barren  who  ought  to 
be  intellectually  rich,  is  due  to 
neglect  to  decide  in  advance  what 
direction  one's  reading  shall  take, 
and  neglect  to  keep  the  book  of  the 
moment  close  at  hand.  The  bi 
ographer  of  Lucy  Larcom  tells  us 
that  the  aspiring  girl  pinned  all 
manner  of  selections  of  prose  and 
verse  which  she  wished  to  learn  at 
the  sides  of  the  window  beside  which 
her  loom  was  placed ;  and  in  this 
way,  in  the  intervals  of  work,  she 
familiarised  herself  with  a  great  deal 
of  good  literature.  A  certain  man, 
now  widely  known,  spent  his  boy 
hood  on  a  farm,  and  largely  educated 
himself.  He  learned  the  rudiments 
of  Latin  in  the  evening,  and  carried 
26 


Time  and  Place. 

on  his  study  during  working  hours 
by  pinning  ten  lines  from  Virgil  on 
his  plough,  —  a  method  of  refresh 
ment  much  superior  to  that  which 
Homer  furnished  the  ploughman  in 
the  well-known  passage  in  the  de 
scription  of  the  shield.  These  are 
extreme  cases,  but  they  are  capital 
illustrations  of  the  immense  power  of 
enrichment  which  is  inherent  in  frag 
ments  of  time  pieced  together  by  in 
telligent  purpose  and  persistent  habit. 
This  faculty  of  draining  all  the 
rivulets  of  knowledge  by  the  way 
was  strikingly  developed  by  a  man 
of  surpassing  eloquence  and  tireless 
activity.  He  was  never  a  methodical 
student  in  the  sense  of  following 
rigidly  a  single  line  of  study,  but 
he  habitually  fed  himself  with  any 
kind  of  knowledge  which  was  at 
hand.  If  books  were  at  his  elbow, 
27 


Time  and  Place. 

he  read  them  ;  if  pictures,  engrav 
ings,  gems  were  within  reach,  he 
studied  them  ;  if  nature  was  within 
walking  distance,  he  watched  nature; 
if  men  were  about  him,  he  learned 
the  secrets  of  their  temperaments, 
tastes,  and  skills  ;  if  he  were  on  ship 
board,  he  knew  the  dialect  of  the 
vessel  in  the  briefest  possible  time ; 
if  he  travelled  by  stage,  he  sat  with 
the  driver  and  learned  all  about  the 
route,  the  country,  the  people,  and 
the  art  of  his  companion  ;  if  he  had 
a  spare  hour  in  a  village  in  which 
there  was  a  manufactory,  he  went 
through  it  with  keen  eyes  and 
learned  the  mechanical  processes 
used  in  it.  "Shall  I  tell  you  the 
secret  of  the  true  scholar? "  says 
Emerson.  "  It  is  this  :  every  man 
I  meet  is  my  master  in  some  point, 
and  in  that  I  learn  of  him." 
28 


Time  and  Place. 

The  man  who  is  bent  on  getting 
the  most  out  of  life  in  order  that  he 
may  make  his  own  nature  rich  and 
productive  will  learn  to  free  himself 
largely  from  dependence  on  condi 
tions.  The  power  of  concentration 
which  issues  from  a  resolute  purpose, 
and  is  confirmed  by  habits  formed  to 
give  that  purpose  effectiveness,  is  of 
more  value  than  undisturbed  hours 
and  the  solitude  of  a  library;  it  is  of 
more  value  because  it  takes  the  place 
of  things  which  cannot  always  be  at 
command.  To  learn  how  to  treat 
the  odds  and  ends  of  hours  so  that 
they  constitute,  for  practical  pur 
poses,  an  unbroken  duration  of  time, 
is  to  emancipate  one's  self  from  de 
pendence  on  particular  times,  and  to 
appropriate  all  time  to  one's  use  ;  and 
in  like  manner  to  accustom  one's  self 
to  make  use  of  all  places,  however 
29 


Time  and  Place. 

thronged  and  public,  as  if  they  were 
private  and  secluded,  is  to  free  one's 
self  from  bondage  to  a  particular 
locality,  or  to  surroundings  specially 
chosen  for  the  purpose.  Those  who 
have  abundance  of  leisure  to  spend 
in  their  libraries  are  beyond  the  need 
of  suggestions  as  to  the  use  of  time 
and  place ;  but  those  whose  culture 
must  be  secured  incidentally,  as  it 
were,  need  not  despair,  —  they  have 
shining  examples  of  successful  use 
of  limited  opportunities  about  them. 
It  is  not  only  possible  to  make  all 
time  enrich  us,  but  to  use  all  space 
as  if  it  were  our  own.  To  have  a 
book  in  one's  pocket  and  the  power 
of  fastening  one's  mind  upon  it  to 
the  exclusion  of  every  other  object 
or  interest  is  to  be  independent  of 
the  library,  with  its  unbroken  quiet 
ness.  It  is  to  carry  the  library  with 
30 


Time  and  Place. 

us,  —  not  only    the  book,    but    the 
repose. 

One  bright  June  morning  a  young 
man,  who  happened  to  be  waiting  at 
a  rural  station  to  take  a  train,  dis 
covered  one  of  the  foremost  of 
American  writers,  who  was,  all 
things  considered,  perhaps  the  most 
richly  cultivated  man  whom  the 
country  has  yet  produced,  sitting  on 
the  steps  intent  upon  a  book,  and 
entirely  oblivious  of  his  surround 
ings.  The  young  man's  reverence 
for  the  poet  and  critic  rilled  him  with 
desire  to  know  what  book  had  such 
power  of  beguiling  into  forgetfulness 
one  of  the  noblest  minds  of  the  time. 
He  affirmed  within  himself  that  it 
must  be  a  novel.  He  ventured  to 
approach  near  enough  to  read  the 
title,  holding,  rightly  enough,  that  a 
book  is  not  personal  property,  and 
31 


Time  and  Place. 

that  his  act  involved  no  violation 
of  privacy.  He  discovered  that  the 
great  man  was  reading  a  Greek  play 
with  such  relish  and  abandon  that  he 
had  turned  a  railway  station  into  a 
private  library  !  One  of  the  fore 
most  of  American  novelists,  a  man 
of  real  literary  insight  and  of  genuine 
charm  of  style,  says  that  he  can  write 
as  comfortably  on  a  trunk  in  a  room 
at  a  hotel,  waiting  to  be  called  for  a 
train,  as  in  his  own  library.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  discipline  behind 
such  a  power  of  concentration  as  that 
illustrated  in  both  these  cases ;  but 
it  is  a  power  which  can  be  culti 
vated  by  any  man  or  woman  of  reso 
lution.  Once  acquired,  the  exercise 
of  it  becomes  both  easy  and  delight 
ful.  It  transforms  travel,  waiting, 
and  dreary  surroundings  into  one 
rich  opportunity.  The  man  who 
32 


Time  and  Place. 

has  the  "Tempest"  in  his  pocket, 
andean  surrender  himself  to  its  spell, 
can  afford  to  lose  time  on  cars,  fer 
ries,  and  at  out-of-the-way  stations ; 
for  the  world  has  become  an  exten 
sion  of  his  library,  and  wherever  he 
is,  he  is  at  home  with  his  purpose 
and  himself. 


33 


Chapter  III. 
Meditation  and  Imagination. 

^"PHERE  is  a  book  in  the  British 
Museum  which  would  have,  for 
many  people,  a  greater  value  than 
any  other  single  volume  in  the 
world  ;  it  is  a  copy  of  Florio's  trans 
lation  of  Montaigne,  and  it  bears 
Shakespeare's  autograph  on  a  fly 
leaf.  There  are  other  books  which 
must  have  had  the  same  ownership  ; 
among  them  were  Holinshed's 
"Chronicles"  and  North's  trans 
lation  of  Plutarch.  Shakespeare 
would  have  laid  posterity  under  still 
greater  obligations,  if  that  were  pos 
sible,  if  in  some  autobiographic 
34 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

mood  he  had  told  us  how  he  read 
these  books ;  for  never,  surely,  were 
books  read  with  greater  insight  and 
with  more  complete  absorption. 
Indeed,  the  fruits  of  this  reading 
were  so  rich  and  ripe  that  the  books 
from  which  their  juices  came  seem 
but  dry  husks  and  shells  in  compar 
ison,  The  reader  drained  the  writer 
dry  of  every  particle  of  suggestive- 
ness,  and  then  recreated  the  material 
in  new  and  imperishable  forms.  The 
process  of  reproduction  was  individ 
ual,  §  and  is  not  to  be  shared  by 
others  ;  it  was  the  expression  of  that 
rare  and  inexplicable  personal  energy 
which  we  call  genius  ;  but  the  process 
of  absorption  may  be  shared  by  all 
who  care  to  submit  to  the  discipline 
which  it  involves.  It  is  clear  that 
Shakespeare  read  in  such  a  way  as  to 
possess  what  he  read ;  he  not  only 
35 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

remembered  it,  but  he  incorporated 
it  into  himself.  No  other  kind  of 
reading  could  have  brought  the  East 
out  of  its  grave,  with  its  rich  and 
languorous  atmosphere  steeping  the 
senses  in  the  charm  of  Cleopatra,  or 
recalled  the  /nassive  and  powerfully 
organised  life  of  Rome  about  the 
person  of  the  great  Caesar.  Shake 
speare  read  his  books  with  such  in 
sight  and  imagination  that  they 
became  part  of  himself;  and  so  far 
as  this  process  is  concerned,  the 
reader  of  to-day  can  follow  in  his 
steps. 

The  majority  of  people  have  not 
learned  this  secret ;  they  read  for  in 
formation  or  for  refreshment ;  they 
do  not  read  for  enrichment.  Feed 
ing  one's  nature  at  all  the  sources  of 
life,  browsing  at  will  on  all  the  up 
lands  of  knowledge  and  thought,  do 
36 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

not  bear  the  fruit  of  acquirement 
only  ;  they  put  us  into  personal  pos 
session  of  the  vitality,  the  truth,  and 
the  beauty  about  us.  A  man  may 
know  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  accu 
rately  as  regards  their  order,  form, 
construction,  and  language,  and  yet 
remain  almost  without  knowledge  of 
what  Shakespeare  was  at  heart,  and 
of  his  significance  in  the  history  of 
the  human  soul.  It  is  this  deeper 
knowledge,  however,  which  is  essen 
tial  for  culture ;  for  culture  is  such 
an  appropriation  of  knowledge  that 
it  becomes  a  part  of  ourselves.  It 
is  no  longer  something  added  by  the 
memory ;  it  is  something  possessed 
by  the  soul.  A  pedant  is  formed  by 
his  memory ;  a  man  of  culture  is 
formed  by  the  habit  of  meditation, 
and  by  the  constant  use  of  the  ima 
gination.  An  alert  and  curious  man 
37 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

goes  through  the  world  taking  note 
of  all  that  passes  under  his  eyes,  and 
collects  a  great  mass  of  information, 
which  is  in  no  sense  incorporated 
into  his  own  mind,  but  remains  a 
definite  territory  outside  his  own 
nature,  which  he  has  annexed.  A 
man  of  receptive  mind  and  heart,  on 
the  other  hand,  meditating  on  what 
he  sees,  and  getting  at  its  meaning 
by  the  divining-rod  of  the  imagina 
tion,  discovers  the  law  behind  the 
phenomena,  the  truth  behind  the 
fact,  the  vital  force  which  flows 
through  all  things,  and  gives  them 
their  significance.  The  first  man 
gains  information;  the  second  gains 
culture.  The  pedant  pours  out  an 
endless  succession  of  facts  with  a 
monotonous  uniformity  of  emphasis, 
and  exhausts  while  he  instructs  ,•  the 
man  of  culture  gives  us  a  few  facts, 
33 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

luminous  in  their  relation  to  one 
another,  and  freshens  and  stimulates 
by  bringing  us  into  contact  with 
ideas  and  with  life. 

To  get  at  the  heart  of  books  we 
must  live  with  and  in  them ;  we 
must  make  them  our  constant  com 
panions  ;  we  must  turn  them  over 
and  over  in  thought,  slowly  pene 
trating  their  innermost  meaning ; 
and  when  we  possess  their  thought 
we  must  work  it  into  our  own 
thought.  The  reading  of  a  real 
book  ought  to  be  an  event  in  one's 
history;  it  ought  to  enlarge  the 
vision,  deepen  the  base  of  convic 
tion,  and  add  to  the  reader  what 
ever  knowledge,  insight,  beauty,  and 
power  it  contains.  It  is  possible  to 
spend  years  of  study  on  what  may 
be  called  the  externals  of  the  "  Divine 
Comedy,"  and  remain  unaffected  in 
39 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

nature  by  this  contact  with  one  of 
the  masterpieces  of  the  spirit  of  man 
as  well  as  of  the  art  of  literature.  It 
is  also  possible  to  so  absorb  Dante's 
thought  and  so  saturate  one's  self 
with  the  life  of  the  poem  as  to  add 
to  one's  individual  capital  of  thought 
and  experience  all  that  the  poet  dis 
cerned  in  that  deep  heart  of  his 
and  wrought  out  of  that  intense  and 
tragic  experience.  But  this  perma 
nent  and  personal  possession  can  be 
acquired  by  those  alone  who  brood 
over  the  poem  and  recreate  it  within 
themselves  by  the  play  of  the  ima 
gination  upon  it.  A  visitor  was 
shown  into  Mr.  Lowell's  room  one 
evening  not  many  years  ago,  and 
found  him  barricaded  behind  rows 
of  open  books;  they  covered  the 
table  and  were  spread  out  on  the 
floor  in  an  irregular  but  magic  circle. 
40 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

cc  Still  studying  Dante  ?  "  said  the 
intruder  into  the  workshop  of  as 
true  a  man  of  culture  as  we  have 
known  on  this  continent.  cc  Yes," 
was  the  prompt  reply;  "always 
studying  Dante." 

A  man's  intellectual  character  is 
determined  by  what  he  habitually 
thinks  about.  The  mind  cannot 
always  be  consciously  directed  to 
definite  ends  ;  it  has  hours  of  relax 
ation.  There  are  many  hours  in  the 
life  of  the  most  strenuous  and  ardu 
ous  man  when  the  mind  goes  its  own 
way  and  thinks  its  own  thoughts. 
These  times  of  relaxation,  when  the 
mind  follows  its  own  bent,  are  per 
haps  the  most  fruitful  and  significant 
periods  in  a  rich  and  noble  intellec 
tual  life.  The  real  nature,  the  deeper 
instincts  of  the  man,  come  out  in 
these  moments,  as  essential  refine- 
41 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

ment   and    genuine  breeding  are  re 
vealed   when  the  man    is    off  guard 
and    acts    and    speaks    instinctively. 
It  is  possible  to  be  mentally  active 
and  intellectually  poor   and  sterile  ; 
to    drive    the     mind     along    certain 
courses    of  work,  but    to    have    no 
deep   life    of  thought    behind    these 
calculated  activities.     The  life  of  the 
mind  is  rich  and  fruitful  only  when 
thought,  released  from  specific  tasks, 
flies  at  once  to  great  themes  as  its 
natural  objects  of  interest  and  love, 
its    natural    sources    of   refreshment 
and    strength.     Under  all  our    defi 
nite  activities  there  runs  a  stream  of 
meditation  ;   and  the  character  of  that 
meditation  determines  our  wealth  or 
our  poverty,  our  productiveness  or 
our  sterility. 

This    instinctive    action    of    the 
mind,  although  largely  unconscious, 
42 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

is  by  no  means  irresponsible  ;  it  may 
be  directed  and  controlled ;  it  may 
be  turned,  by  such  control,  into  a 
Pactolian  stream,  enriching  us  while 
we  rest  and  ennobling  us  while  we 
play.  For  the  mind  may  be  trained 
to  meditate  on  great  themes  instead 
of  giving  itself  up  to  idle  reverie  ; 
when  it  is  released  from  work  it  may 
concern  itself  with  the  highest  things 
as  readily  as  with  those  which  are 
insignificant  and  paltry.  Whoever 
can  command  his  meditations  in  the 
streets,  along  the  country  roads,  on 
the  train,  in  the  hours  of  relaxation, 
can  enrich  himself  for  all  time  with 
out  effort  or  fatigue ;  for  it  is  as 
easy  and  restful  to  think  about  great 
things  as  about  small  ones.  A  cer 
tain  lover  of  books  made  this  dis 
covery  years  ago,  and  has  turned  it 
to  account  with  great  profit  to  him- 
43 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

self.  He  thought  he  discovered  in 
the  faces  of  certain  great  writers  a 
meditative  quality  full  of  repose  and 
suggestive  of  a  constant  companion 
ship  with  the  highest  themes.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  these  thinkers, 
who  had  done  so  much  to  liberate 
his  own  thought,  must  have  dwelt 
habitually  with  noble  ideas ;  that  in 
every  leisure  hour  they  must  have 
turned  instinctively  to  those  deep 
things  which  concern  most  closely 
the  life  of  men.  The  vast  majority 
of  men  are  so  absorbed  in  dealing 
with  material  that  they  appear  to  be 
untouched  by  the  general  questions 
of  life ;  but  these  general  questions 
are  the  habitual  concern  of  the  men 
who  think.  In  such  men  the  mind, 
released  from  specific  tasks,  turns  at 
once  and  by  preference  to  these  great 
themes,  and  by  quiet  meditation 
44 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

feeds  and  enriches  the  very  soul  of 
the  thinker.  And  the  quality  of  this 
meditation  determines  whether  the 
nature  shall  be  productive  or  sterile ; 
whether  a  man  shall  be  merely  a 
logician,  or  a  creative  force  in  the 
world.  Following  this  hint,  this 
lover  of  books  persistently  trained 
himself,  in  his  leisure  hours,  to  think 
over  the  books  he  was  reading ;  to 
meditate  on  particular  passages,  and, 
in  the  case  of  dramas  and  novels, 
to  look  at  characters  from  different 
sides.  It  was  not  easy  at  first,  and 
it  was  distinctively  work  ;  but  it  be 
came  instinctive  at  last,  and  conse 
quently  it  became  play.  The  stream 
of  thought,  once  set  in  a  given  direc 
tion,  flows  now  of  its  own  gravita 
tion  ;  and  reverie,  instead  of  being 
idle  and  meaningless,  has  become  rich 
and  fruitful.  If  one  subjects  "  The 
45 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

Tempest/'  for  instance,  to  this  pro 
cess,  he  soon  learns  it  by  heart ;  first 
he  feels  its  beauty  ;  then  he  gets  what 
ever  definite  information  there  is  in 
it;  as  he  reflects,  its  constructive 
unity  grows  clear  to  him,  and  he 
sees  its  quality  as  a  piece  of  art ;  and 
finally  its  rich  and  noble  disclosure 
of  the  poet's  conception  of  life  grows 
upon  him  until  the  play  belongs  to 
him  almost  as  much  as  it  belonged 
to  Shakespeare.  This  process  of 
meditation  habitually  brought  to 
bear  on  one's  reading  lays  bare  the 
very  heart  of  the  book  in  hand, 
and  puts  one  in  complete  possession 
of  it. 

This  process  of  meditation,  if  it  is 
to  bear  its  richest  fruit,  must  be  ac 
companied  by  a  constant  play  of  the 
imagination,  than  which  there  is  no 
faculty  more  readily  cultivated  or 
46 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

more  constantly  neglected.  Some 
readers  see  only  a  flat  surface  as  they 
read;  others  find  the  book  a  door 
into  a  real  world,  and  forget  that 
they  are  dealing  with  a  book.  The 
real  readers  get  beyond  the  book,  into 
the  life  which  it  describes.  They 
see  the  island  in  "The  Tempest;" 
they  hear  the  tumult  of  the  storm ; 
they  mingle  with  the  little  company 
who,  on  that  magical  stage,  reflect 
all  the  passions  of  men  and  are 
brought  under  the  spell  of  the  high 
est  powers  of  man's  spirit.  It  is  a 
significant  fact  that  in  the  lives  of 
men  of  genius  the  reading  of  two  or 
three  books  has  often  provoked  an 
immediate  and  striking  expansion 
of  thought  and  power.  Samuel 
Johnson,  a  clumsy  boy  in  his  father's 
bookshop,  searching  for  apples,  came 
upon  Petrarch,  and  was  destined 
47 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

henceforth  to  be  a  man  of  letters, 
John  Keats,  apprenticed  to  an  apothe 
cary,  read  Spenser's  "Epithalamium" 
one  golden  afternoon  in  company 
with  his  friend,  Cowden  Clarke,  and 
from  that  hour  was  a  poet  by  the 
grace  of  God.  In  both  cases  the 
readers  read  with  the  imagination, 
or  their  own  natures  would  not  have 
kindled  with  so  sudden  a  flash.  The 
torch  is  passed  on  to  those  only 
whose  hands  are  outstretched  to  re 
ceive  it.  To  read  with  the  imagina 
tion,  one  must  take  time  to  let  the 
figures  reform  in  his  own  mind ; 
he  must  see  them  with  great  distinct 
ness  and  realise  them  with  great 
definiteness.  Benjamin  Franklin 
tells  us,  in  that  Autobiography 
which  was  one  of  our  earliest  and 
remains  one  of  our  most  genuine 
pieces  of  writing,  that  when  he  dis- 
48 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

covered  his  need  of  a  larger  vocabu 
lary  he  took  some  of  the  tales  which 
he  found  in  an  odd  volume  of  the 
"Spectator"  and  turned  them  into 
verse ;  cc  and  after  a  time,  when  I 
had  pretty  well  forgotten  the  prose, 
turned  them  back  again.  I  also 
sometimes  jumbled  my  collections 
of  hints  into  confusion,  and  after 
some  weeks  endeavoured  to  reduce 
them  into  the  best  order  before  I 
began  to  form  the  full  sentences  and 
compleat  the  paper."  Such  a  patient 
recasting  of  material  for  the  ends  of 
verbal  exactness  and  accuracy  sug 
gests  ways  in  which  the  imagination 
may  deal  with  characters  and  scenes 
in  order  to  stimulate  and  foster  its 
own  activity.  It  is  well  to  recall  at 
frequent  intervals  the  story  we  read 
in  some  dramatist,  poet,  or  novelist, 

in  order  that    the  imagination    may 
4  49 


Meditation  and  Imagination. 

set  it  before  us  again  in  all  its  rich 
vitality.  It  is  well  also  as  we  read 
to  insist  on  seeing  the  picture  as 
well  as  the  words.  It  is  as  easy  to 
see  the  bloodless  duke  before  the 
portrait  of  "  My  Last  Duchess," 
in  Browning's  little  masterpiece,  to 
take  in  all  the  accessories  and  carry 
away  with  us  a  vivid  and  lasting  im 
pression,  as  it  is  to  follow  with  the 
eye  the  succession  of  words.  In 
this  way  we  possess  the  poem,  and 
make  it  serve  the  ends  of  culture. 


Chapter  IV. 
The  First  Delight. 

were  readinS  Plato's  Apol 
ogy  in  the  Sixth  Form," 
says  Mr.  Symonds  in  his  account 
of  his  school  life  at  Harrow.  "  I 
bought  Gary's  crib,  and  took  it  with 
me  to  London  on  an  exeat  in  March. 
My  hostess,  a  Mrs.  Bain,  who  lived 
in  Regent's  Park,  treated  me  to  a 
comedy  one  evening  at  the  Hay- 
market.  I  forget  what  the  play 
was.  When  we  returned  from  the 
play  I  went  to  bed  and  began  to 
read  my  Gary's  Plato.  It  so  hap 
pened  that  I  stumbled  on  the  c  Phae- 
drus.'  I  read  on  and  on,  till  I  reached 


The  First  Delight. 

the  end.  Then  I  began  the  'Sym 
posium  ; '  and  the  sun  was  shining  on 
the  shrubs  outside  the  ground  floor 
on  which  I  slept  before  I  shut  the 
book  up.  I  have  related  these  un 
important  details  because  that  night 
was  one  of  the  most  important 
nights  of  my  life.  .  .  .  Here  in  the 
4  Phsedrus  '  and  the  c  Symposium,'  in 
the  c  Myth  of  the  Soul/  I  discovered 
the  revelation  I  had  been  waiting  for, 
the  consecration  of  a  long-cherished 
idealism.  It  was  just  as  though  the 
voice  of  my  own  soul  spoke  to  me 
through  Plato.  Harrow  vanished 
into  unreality.  I  had  touched  solid 
ground.  Here  was  the  poetry,  the 
philosophy  of  my  own  enthusiasm, 
expressed  with  all  the  magic  of  un 
rivalled  style."  The  experience  re 
corded  in  these  words  is  typical ;  it 
comes  to  every  one  who  has  the 
52 


The  First  Delight. 

capacity  for  the  highest  form  of  en 
joyment  and  the  highest  kind  of 
growth.  It  was  an  experience  which 
was  both  emotional  and  spiritual  ; 
delight  and  expansion  were  involved 
in  it;  the  joy  of  contact  with  some 
thing  beautiful,  and  the  sudden  en 
largement  which  comes  from  touch 
with  a  great  nature  dealing  with 
fundamental  truth.  In  every  expe 
rience  of  this  kind  there  comes  an 
access  of  life,  as  if  one  had  drunk  at 
a  fountain  of  vitality. 

A  thrilling  chapter  in  the  spiritual 
history  of  the  race  might  be  written 
by  bringing  together  the  reports  of 
such  experiences  which  are  to  be 
found  in  almost  all  literatures, — ex 
periences  which  vary  greatly  in  depth 
and  significance,  which  have  in 
common  the  unfailing  interest  of 
discovery  and  growth.  If  this  col- 
53 


The  First  Delight. 

location  of  vital  contacts  could  be 
expanded  so  as  to  include  the  history 
of  the  intellectual  commerce  of  races, 
we  should  be  able  to  read  the  story 
of  humanity  in  a  new  and  searching 
light.  For  the  transmission  of  Greek 
thought  and  beauty  to  the  Oriental 
world,  the  wide  diffusion  of  Hebrew 
ideas  of  man  and  his  life,  the  contact 
of  the  modern  with  the  antique  world 
in  the  Renaissance,  for  instance,  ef 
fected  changes  in  the  spiritual  consti 
tution  of  man  more  subtle,  pervasive, 
and  radical  than  we  are  yet  in  a  posi 
tion  to  understand.  The  spiritual 
history  of  men  is  largely  a  history 
of  discovery,  —  the  record  of  those 
fruitful  moments  when  we  come 
upon  new  things,  and  our  ideas  are 
swiftly  or  slowly  expanded  to  in 
clude  them.  That  process  is  gen 
erally  both  rapid  and  continuous ; 
54 


The  First  Delight. 

the  discovery  of  this  continent  made 
an  instant  and  striking  impression 
on  the  older  world,  but  that  older 
world  has  not  yet  entirely  adjusted 
itself  to  the  changes  in  the  social 
order  which  were  to  follow  close 
upon  the  rising  of  the  new  world 
above  the  once  mysterious  line  of 
the  western  horizon. 

Now,  this  process  of  discovery  goes 
on  continuously  in  the  experience  of 
every  human  soul  which  has  capacity 
for  growth  ;  and  it  is  the  peculiar  joy 
of  the  lover  of  books.  Literature  is 
a  continual  revelation  to  every  genu 
ine  reader ;  a  revelation  of  that  qual 
ity  which  we  call  art,  and  a  revelation 
of  that  mysterious  vital  force  which 
we  call  life.  In  this  double  disclos 
ure  literature  shares  with  all  art  a 
function  which  ranges  it  with  the 
greatest  resources  of  the  spirit ;  and 
55 


The  First  Delight. 

the  reader  who  has  the  trained  vision 
has  the  constant  joy  of  discovery: 
first,  of  beauty  and  power;  next,  of 
that  concrete  or  vital  form  of  truth 
which  is  one  with  life.  One  who 
studies  books  is  in  constant  peril  of 
losing  the  charm  of  the  first  by  per 
mitting  himself  to  be  absorbed  in 
the  interest  of  the  second  discovery. 
When  one  has  begun  to  see  the  range 
and  veracity  of  literature  as  a  disclos 
ure  of  the  soul  and  life  of  man,  the 
definite  literary  quality  sometimes 
becomes  of  secondary  importance. 
In  academic  teaching  the  study  of 
philology,  of  grammar,  of  construc 
tion,  of  literary  history,  has  often 
been  mistaken  or  substituted  for  the 
study  of  literature ;  and  in  private 
study  the  peculiar  enrichment  which 
comes  from  art  simply  as  art  is  often 
needlessly  sacrificed  by  exclusive  at- 
56 


The  First  Delight. 

tention   to    books   as   documents   of 
spiritual  history. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  books 
become  literature  by  virtue  of  a  cer 
tain  quality  which  is  diffused  through 
every  true  literary  work,  and  which 
separates  it  at  once  and  forever  from 
all  other  writing.  To  miss  this 
quality,  therefore,  is  to  miss  the 
very  essence  of  the  thing  with  which 
we  are  in  contact ;  to  treat  the  inspired 
books  as  if  they  were  uninspired. 
The  first  discovery  which  the  real 
reader  makes  is  the  perception  of 
some  new  and  individual  beauty  or 
power ;  the  discovery  of  life  and 
truth  is  secondary  in  order  of  time, 
and  depends  in  no  small  measure 
on  the  sensitiveness  of  the  spirit 
to  the  first  and  obvious  charm.  If 
one  wishes  to  study  the  life  —  not 
the  mere  structure  —  of  an  apple- 
57 


The  First  Delight. 

tree  in  bloom,  he  must  surrender 
himself  at  the  start  to  the  bloom  and 
fragrance ;  for  these  are  not  mere 
external  phases  of  the  growth  of  the 
tree,  —  they  are  most  delicate  and 
characteristic  disclosures  of  its  life. 
In  like  manner  he  who  would  mas 
ter  "As  You  Like  It"  must  give 
himself  up  in  the  first  place  to  its 
wonderful  and  significant  beauty. 
For  this  lovely  piece  of  literature 
is  a  revelation  in  its  art  quite  as 
definitely  as  in  its  thought ;  and  the 
first  care  of  the  reader  must  be  to 
feel  the  deep  and  lasting  charm  con 
tained  in  the  play.  In  that  charm 
resides  something  which  may  be 
transmitted,  and  the  reception  of 
which  is  always  a  step  in  culture. 

To  feel  freshly  and  deeply  is  not 
only  a  characteristic  of  the  artist,  but 
also  of  the  reader ;   the  first  finds  de- 
58 


The  First  Delight. 

light  in  creation,  the  second  finds 
delight  in  discovery  between  them 
they  divide  one  of  the  greatest  joys 
known  to  men.  Wagner  somewhere 
says  that  the  greatest  joy  possible  to 
man  is  the  putting  forth  of  creative 
activity  so  spontaneously  that  the 
critical  faculty  is,  for  the  time  being, 
asleep.  The  purest  joy  known  to 
the  reader  is  a  perception  of  the 
beauty  and  power  of  a  work  of  art 
so  fresh  and  instantaneous  that  it 
completely  absorbs  the  whole  nature. 
Analysis,  criticism,  and  judicial  ap 
praisement  come  later ;  the  first 
moment  must  be  surrendered  to  the 
joy  of  discovery. 

Heine  has  recorded  the  overpow 
ering  impression  made  upon  him  by 
the  first  glimpse  of  the  Venus  of 
Melos.  An  experience  so  extreme 
in  emotional  quality  could  come  only 
59 


The  First  Delight. 

to  a  nature  singularly  sensitive  to 
beauty  and  abnormally  sensitive  to 
physical  emotion  ;  but  he  who  has 
no  power  of  feeling  intensely  the 
power  of  beauty  in  the  moment 
of  discovery,  has  missed  something 
of  very  high  value  in  the  process  of 
culture.  One  of  the  signs  of  real 
culture  is  the  power  of  enjoyment 
which  goes  with  fresh  feeling.  All 
great  art  is  full  of  this  feeling;  its 
characteristic  is  the  new  interest  with 
which  it  invests  the  most  familiar 
objects  ;  and  one  evidence  of  capacity 
to  receive  culture  from  art  is  the 
development  of  this  feeling.  The 
reader  who  is  on  the  way  to  enrich 
himself  by  contact  with  books  culti 
vates  the  power  of  feeling  freshly  and 
keenly  the  charm  of  every  book  he 
reads  simply  as  a  piece  of  litera 
ture.  One  may  destroy  this  power 
60 


The  First  Delight. 

by  permitting  analysis  and  criticism 
to  become  the  primary  mood,  or  one 
may  develop  it  by  resolutely  putting 
analysis  and  criticism  into  the  secon 
dary  place,  and  sedulously  develop 
ing  the  power  to  enjoy  for  the  sake 
of  enjoyment.  The  reader  who  does 
not  feel  the  immediate  and  obvious 
beauty  of  a  poem  or  a  play  has  lost 
the  power,  not  only  of  getting  the  full 
effect  of  a  work  of  art,  but  of  getting 
its  full  significance  as  well.  The  sur 
prise,  the  delight,  the  joy  of  the  first 
discovery  are  not  merely  pleasurable ; 
they  are  in  the  highest  degree  educa 
tional.  They  reveal  the  sensitive 
ness  of  the  nature  to  those  ultimate 
forms  of  beauty  and  power  which  art 
takes  on,  and  its  power  of  respond 
ing  not  only  to  what  is  obviously 
beautiful  but  is  also  profoundly  true. 
For  the  harmonious  and  noble  beauty 
61 


The  First  Delight. 

of  "As  You  Like  It"  is  not  only 
obvious  and  external ;  it  is  wrought 
into  its  structure  so  completely  that, 
like  the  blossom  of  the  apple,  it  is 
the  effluence  of  the  life  of  the  play. 
To  get  delight  out  of  reading  is, 
therefore,  the  first  and  constant  care 
of  the  reader  who  wishes  to  be  en 
riched  by  vital  contact  with  the  most 
inclusive  and  expressive  of  the  arts. 


62 


Chapter  V. 

The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

'T'HE  importance  of  reading  habit 
ually  the  best  books  becomes 
apparent  when  one  remembers  that 
taste  depends  very  largely  on  the 
standards  with  which  we  are  familiar, 
and  that  the  ability  to  enjoy  the  best 
and  only  the  best  is  conditioned  upon 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  best. 
The  man  who  is  thrown  into  constant 
association  with  inferior  work  either 
revolts  against  his  surroundings  or 
suffers  a  disintegration  of  aim  and 
standard,  which  perceptibly  lowers 
the  plane  on  which  he  lives.  In 
either  case  the  power  of  enjoyment 
63 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

from  contact  with  a  genuine  piece  of 
creative  work  is  sensibly  diminished, 
and  may  be  finally  lost.  The  deli 
cacy  of  the  mind  is  both  precious  and 
perishable ;  it  can  be  preserved  only 
by  associations  which  confirm  and 
satisfy  it.  For  this  reason,  among 
others,  the  best  books  are  the  only 
books  which  a  man  bent  on  culture 
should  read ;  inferior  books  not  only 
waste  his  time,  but  they  dull  the  edge 
of  his  perception  and  diminish  his 
capacity  for  delight. 

This  delight,  born  afresh  of  every 
new  contact  of  the  mind  with  a  real 
book,  furnishes  indubitable  evidence 
that  the  reader  has  the  feeling  for 
literature,  —  a  possession  much  rarer 
than  is  commonly  supposed.  It  is 
no  injustice^  to_say___that  the__majority 
o£-those  who  read  have  no  feeling  for 
literature;  their  interest  is  awakened 
64 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

or  sustained  not  by  the  literary  quality 
of  a  book,  but  by  some  element  of 
brightness  or  novelty,  or  by  the  charm 
of  narrative.  Reading  which  finds  its 
reward  in  these  things  is  entirely  legi 
timate,  but  it  is  not  the  kind  of  read 
ing  which  secures  culture.  It  adds 
largely  to  orjel§^k>ck  of  information, 
and  it  refreshes  the  mind  by  intro 
ducing  new  objects  of  interest;  but  it 
does  not  minister  directly  to  the  re 
fining  and  maturing  of  the  nature. 
The  same  book  may  be  read  in  en 
tirely  different  ways  and  with  entirely 
different  results.  One  may,  for  in 
stance,  read  Shakespeare's  historical 
plays  simply  for  the  story  element 
which  runs  through  them,  and  for 
the  interest  which  the  skilful  use  of 
that  element  excites ;  and  in  such  a 
reading  there  will  be  distinct  gain  for 
the  reader.  This  is  the  way  in  which 
5  65 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

a  healthy  boy  generally  reads  these 
plays  for  the  first  time.  From  such 
a  reading  one  will  get  information  and 
refreshment ;  more  than  one  English 
statesman  has  confessed  that  he  owed 
his  knowledge  of  certain  periods  of 
English  history  largely  to  Shakes 
peare.  On  the  other  hand,  one  may 
read  these  plays  for  the  joy  of  the 
art  that  is  in  them,  and  for  the 
enrichment  which  comes  from  con 
tact  with  the  deep  and  tumultuous 
life  which  throbs  through  them ;  and 
this  is  the  kind  of  reading  which 
produces  culture,  the  reading  which 
means  enlargement  and  ripening. 

The  feeling  for  literature,  like  the 
feeling  for  art  in  general,  is  not  only 
susceptible  of  cultivation,  but  very 
quickly  responds  to  appeals  which 
are  made  to  it  by  noble  or  beautiful 
objects.  It  is  essentially  a  feeling, 
66 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

but  it  is  a  feeling  which  depends 
very  largely  on  intelligence ;  it  is 
strengthened  and  made  sensitive  and 
responsive  by  constant  contact  with 
those  objects  which  call  it  out.  No 
rules  can  be  laid  down  for  its  de 
velopment  save  the  very  simple  rule 
to  read  only  and  always  those  books 
which  are  literature.  It  is  impossible 
to  give  specific  directions  for  the  culti 
vation  of  the  feeling  for  Nature.  It 
is  not  to  be  gotten  out  of  text-books 
of  any  kind ;  it  is  not  to  be  found  in 
botanies  or  geologies  or  works  on  zo 
ology  ;  it  is  to  be  gotten  only  out  of 
familiarity  with  Nature  herself.  Daily 
fellowship  with  landscapes,  trees,  skies, 
birds,  with  an  open  mind  and  in  a  re 
ceptive  mood,  soon  develops  in  one  a 
kind  of  spiritual  sense  which  takes  cog 
nisance  of  things  not  seen  before  and 
adds  a  new  joy  and  resource  to  life. 

67 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

In  like  manner  the  feeling  for  literature 
is  quickened  and  nourished  by  intimate 
acquaintance  with  books  of  beauty  and 
power.  Such  an  intimacy  makes  the 
sense  of  delight  more  keen,  preserves 
it  against  influences  which  tend  to 
deaden  it,  and  makes  the  taste  more 
sure  and  trustworthy.  A  man  who 
has  long  had  acquaintance  with  the 
best  in  any  department  of  art  comes 
to  have,  almost  unconsciously  to  him 
self,  an  instinctive  power  of  discerning 
good  work  from  bad,  of  recognising 
on  the  instant  the  sound  and  true 
method  and  style,  and  of  feeling  a 
fresh  and  constant  delight  in  such 
work.  His  education  comes  not  by 
didactic,  but  by  vital  methods. 

The   art   quality   in   a  book   is   as 
difficult  to  analyse  as  the  feeling  for 
it ;  not  because  it  is  intangible  or  in 
definite,  but   because  it  is  so  subtly 
68 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

diffused.  It  is  difficult  to  analyse 
because  it  is  the  breath  of  life  in  the 
book,  and  life  always  evades  us,  no 
matter  how  keen  and  exhaustive  our 
search  may  be.  Most  of  us  are  so 
entirely  out  of  touch  with  the  spirit 
of  art  in  this  busy  new  world  that  we 
are  not  quite  convinced  of  its  reality. 
We  know  that  it  is  decorative,  and 
that  a  certain  pleasure  flows  from  it ; 
but  we  are  sceptical  of  its  significance 
in  the  life  of  the  race,  of  its  deep 
necessity  in  the  development  of  that 
life,  and  of  its  supreme  educational 
value.  And  our  scepticism,  it  must 
be  frankly  said,  like  most  scepticism, 
grows  out  of  our  ignorance.  True 
art  has  nothing  in  common  with  the 
popular  conception  of  its  nature  and 
uses.  Instead  of  being  decorative, 
it  is  organic ;  when  men  arrive  at  a 
certain  stage  of  ripeness  and  power 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

they  express  themselves  through  its 
forms  as  naturally  as  the  tree  puts 
forth  its  flowers.  Nothing  which  lies 
within  the  range  of  human  achieve 
ment  is  more  real  or  inevitable. 
This  expression  is  neither  mechanical 
nor  artificial ;  it  is  made  under  certain 
inflexible  laws,  but  they  are  the  laws 
of  the  human  spirit,  not  the  rules  of 
a  craft ;  they  are  rooted  in  that  deeper 
psychology  which  deals  with  man  as 
an  organic  whole  and  not  as  a  bundle 
of  separate  faculties. 

It  was  once  pointed  out  to  Tenny 
son  that  he  had  scrupulously  con 
formed,  in  a  certain  poem,  to  a  number 
of  rules  of  versification  and  to  certain 
principles  in  the  use  of  different  sound 
values.  "  Yes,"  answered  the  poet  in 
substance,  "  I  carefully  observed  all 
those  rules  and  was  entirely  uncon 
scious  of  them  !  "  There  was  no 
70 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

contradiction  between  the  Laureate's 
practice  of  his  craft  and  the  technical 
rules  which  govern  it.  The  poet's 
instinct  kept  him  in  harmony  with 
those  essential  and  vital  principles  of 
language  of  which  the  formal  rules 
are  simply  didactic  statements. 

Art,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  is  never 
artifice ;  intelligence  and  calculation 
enter  into  the  work  of  the  artist,  but 
in  the  last  analysis  it  is  the  free  and 
noble  expression  of  his  own  personal 
ity.  It  expresses  what  is  deepest  and 
most  significant  in  him,  and  expresses 
it  in  a  final  rather  than  a  provisional 
form.  The  secret  of  the  reality  and 
power  of  art  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is 
the  culmination  and  summing  up  of 
a  process  of  observation,  experience, 
and  feeling ;  it  is  the  deposit  of  what 
ever  is  richest  and  most  enduring  in 
the  life  of  a  man  or  a  race.  It  is 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

a  finality  both  of  experience  and  of 
thought ;  it  contains  the  ultimate  and 
the  widest  conception  of  man's  nature 
and  life,  or  of  the  meaning  and  reality 
of  Nature,  which  an  age  or  a  race 
reaches.  It  is  the  supreme  flowering 
of  the  genius  of  a  race  or  an  age.  It 
has,  therefore,  the  highest  educational 
value.  For  the  very  highest  products 
of  man's  life  in  this  world  are  his 
ideas  and  ideals  ;  they  grow  out  of  his 
highest  nature  ;  they  react  on  his  char 
acter  ;  they  are  the  precious  deposit  of 
all  that  he  has  thought,  felt,  suffered, 
and  done  in  word  and  work,  in  feeling 
and  action.  The  richest  educational 
material  upon  which  modern  men  are 
nourished  are  these  ultimate  conclu 
sions  and  convictions  of  the  Hebrew, 
the  Greek,  and  the  Roman.  These 
ultimate  inferences,  these  final  inter 
pretations  of  their  own  natures  and  of 
72 


The  Feeling  for  Literature. 

the  world  about  them,  contain  not 
only  the  thought  of  these  races,  but 
their  life  as  well.  They  have,  there 
fore,  a  vital  quality  which  not  only 
assures  their  own  immortality,  but 
has  the  power  of  transmission  to 
others.  These  ultimate  results  of 
experience  are  embodied  in  art,  and 
especially  in  literature  ;  and  that  which 
makes  them  art  is  this  very  vitality. 
For  this  reason  art  is  absolutely  es 
sential  for  culture ;  it  has  the  power 
of  enriching  and  expanding  the  na 
tures  which  come  in  contact  with  it 
by  transmitting  to  them  the  highest 
results  of  the  life  of  the  past,  by 
sharing  with  them  the  ripeness  and 
maturity  of  the  human  spirit  in  its 
universal  experience. 


73 


Chapter  VI. 
The  Books  of  Life. 

books  of  power,  as  dis 
tinguished  from  the  books  of 
knowledge,  include  the  original,  cre 
ative,  first-hand  books  in  all  litera 
tures,  and  constitute,  in  the  last  anal 
ysis,  a  comparatively  small  group, 
with  which  any  student  can  thor 
oughly  familiarise  himself.  The  lit 
erary  impulse  of  the  race  has  expressed 
itself  in  a  great  variety  of  works,  of 
varying  charm  and  power ;  but  the 
books  which  are  fountain-heads  of 
vitality,  ideas,  and  beauty,  are  few  in 
number.  These  original  and  domi 
nant  creations  may  be  called  the  books 
74 


The  Books  of  Life. 

of  life,  if  one  may  venture  to  modify 
De  Quincey's  well-worn  phrase.  For 
that  which  is  deepest  in  this  group  of 
masterpieces  is  not  power,  but  some 
thing  greater  and  more  inclusive,  of 
which  power  is  but  a  single  form  of 
expression,  —  life  ;  that  quintessence 
of  the  unbroken  experience  and  ac 
tivity  of  the  race  which  includes  not 
only  thought,  power,  beauty,  and 
every  kind  of  skill,  but,  below  all 
these,  the  living  soul  of  the  living 
man. 

If  it  be  true,  as  many  believe,  that 
the  fundamental  process  of  the  uni 
verse,  so  far  as  we  can  understand  it, 
is  not  intellectual,  but  vital,  it  follows 
that  the  deepest  things  which  men 
have  learned  have  come  to  them  not 
as  the  result  of  processes  of  thought, 
but  as  the  result  of  the  process  of  liv 
ing.  It  is  evident  that  certain  defi- 
75 


The  Books  of  Life. 

nite  purposes  are  being  wrought  out 
through  physical  forms,  processes, 
and  forces ;  science  reveals  clearly 
enough  certain  great  lines  of  devel 
opment.  In  like  manner,  although 
with  very  significant  differences,  cer 
tain  deep  lines  of  growth  and  expan 
sion  become  more  and  more  clear  in 
human  history.  Through  the  bare 
process  of  living,  men  not  only  learn 
fundamental  facts  about  themselves 
and  their  world,  but  they  are  evidently 
working  out  certain  purposes.  Of 
these  purposes  they  do  not,  it  is  true, 
possess  full  knowledge  ;  but  complete 
knowledge  is  necessary  neither  for 
the  demonstration  of  the  existence  of 
the  purpose  nor  for  those  ethical  and 
intellectual  uses  which  that  knowl 
edge  serves.  The  life  of  the  race  is 
a  revelation  of  the  nature  of  man,  of 
the  character  of  his  relations  with  his 
76 


The  Books  of  Life. 

surroundings,  and  of  the  certain  great 
lines  of  development  along  which  the 
race  is  moving.  Every  leading  race 
has  its  characteristic  thought  concern 
ing  its  own  nature,  its  relation  to  the 
world,  and  the  character  and  quality 
of  life.  These  various  fundamen 
tal  conceptions  have  shaped  all  defi 
nite  thinking,  and  have  very  largely 
moulded  race  character,  and,  there 
fore,  determined  race  destiny.  The 
Hebrew,  the  Greek,  and  the  Roman 
conceptions  of  life  constitute  not  only 
the  key  to  the  diverse  histories  of  the 
leaders  of  ancient  civilisation,  but  also 
their  most  vital  contribution  to  civi 
lisation.  These  conceptions  were  not 
definitely  thought  out;  they  were 
worked  out.  They  were  the  result 
of  the  contact  of  these  different  peo 
ples  with  Nature,  with  the  circum 
stances  of  their  own  time,  and  with 
77 


The  Books  of  Life. 

those  universal  experiences  which  fall 
to  the  lot  of  all  men,  and  which  are, 
in  the  long  run,  the  prime  sources 
and  instruments  of  human  educa 
tion. 

The  interpretations  of  life  which 
each  of  these  races  has  left  us  are 
revelations  both  of  race  character  and 
of  life  itself;  they  embody  the  high 
est  thought,  the  deepest  feeling,  the 
most  searching  experiences,  the  keen 
est  suffering,  the  most  strenuous  ac 
tivity.  In  these  interpretations  are 
expressed  and  represented  the  inner 
and  essential  life  of  each  race ;  in 
them  the  soul  of  the  elder  world  sur 
vives.  Now,  these  interpretations 
constitute,  in  their  highest  forms,  not 
only  the  supreme  art  of  the  world, 
but  they  are  also  the  richest  educa 
tional  material  accessible  to  men. 
Information  and  discipline  may  be 

73 


The  Books  of  Life. 

drawn  from  other  sources,  but  that 
culture  which  means  the  enrichment 
and  unfolding  of  a  man's  self  is  largely 
developed  by  familiarity  with  those 
ultimate  conclusions  of  man  about 
himself  which  are  the  deposit  of  all 
that  he  has  thought,  suffered,  wrought, 
and  been,  —  those  deep  deposits  of 
truth  silently  formed  in  the  heart  of 
the  race  in  the  long  and  painful  work 
ing  out  of  its  life,  its  character,  and 
its  destiny.  For  these  rich  interpre 
tations  we  must  turn  to  art,  and  es 
pecially  to  the  art  of  literature ;  and 
in  literature  we  must  turn  especially 
to  the  small  group  of  works  which, 
by  reason  of  the  adequacy  with  which 
they  convey  and  illustrate  these  in 
terpretations,  hold  the  first  places,  — 
the  books  of  life. 

The  man  who  would  get  the  ripest 
culture   from    books    ought   to    read 
79 


The   Books  of  Life. 

many,  but  there  are  a  few  books 
which  he  must  read;  among  them, 
first  and  foremost,  are  the  Bible,  and 
the  works  of  Homer,  Dante,  Shake- 
xspeare,  and  Goethe.  These  are  the 
supreme  books  of  life  as  distinguished 
from  the  books  of  knowledge  and 
skill.  They  hold  their  places  because 
they  combine  in  the  highest  degree 
vitality,  truth,  power,  and  beauty. 
They  are  the  central  reservoirs  into 
which  the  rivulets  of  individual  ex 
perience  over  a  vast  surface  have  been 
gathered ;  they  are  the  most  complete 
revelations  of  what  life  has  brought 
and  has  been  to  the  leading  races ; 
they  bring  us  into  contact  with  the 
heart  and  soul  of  humanity.  They 
not  only  convey  information,  and, 
rightly  used,  impart  discipline,  but 
they  transmit  life.  There  is  a  vital 
ity  in  them  which  passes  on  into  the 
80 


The  Books  of  Life. 

nature  which  is  open  to  receive  it. 
They  have  again  and  again  inspired 
intellectual  movements  on  a  wide 
scale,  as  they  are  constantly  recreating 
individual  ideals  and  aims.  What 
ever  view  may  be  held  of  the  author 
ity  of  the  Bible,  it  is  agreed  that  its 
power  as  literature  has  been  incalcu 
lable  by  reason  of  the  depth  of  life 
which  it  sounds  and  the  range  of  life 
which  it  compasses.  There  is  power 
enough  in  it  to  revive  a  decaying  age 
or  give  a  new  date  and  a  fresh  impulse 
to  a  race  which  has  parted  with  its 
creative  energy.  The  reappearance 
of  the  New  Testament  in  Greek, 
after  the  long  reign  of  the  Vulgate, 
contributed  mightily  to  that  renewal 
and  revival  of  life  which  we  call  the 
Reformation ;  while  its  translation 
into  the  modern  languages  liberated  a 
moral  and  intellectual  force  of  which 
6  81 


The  Books  of  Life. 

no  adequate  measurement  can  be 
made.  In  like  manner,  though  in 
lesser  degree,  the  "  Iliad  "  and  "  Odys 
sey,"  the  "  Divine  Comedy,"  the 
plays  of  Shakespeare,  and  "  Faust " 
have  set  new  movements  in  motion 
and  have  enriched  and  enlarged  the 
lives  of  races. 

With  these  books  of  life  every 
man  ought  to  hold  the  most  intimate 
relationship ;  they  are  not  to  be  read 
once  and  put  on  the  upper  shelves  of 
the  library  among  those  classics  which 
establish  one's  claim  to  good  intel 
lectual  standing,  but  which  silently 
gather  the  dust  of  isolation  and  soli 
tude  ;  they  are  to  be  always  at  hand. 
The  barrier  of  language  has  disap 
peared  so  far  as  they  are  concerned ; 
they  are  to  be  had  in  many  and  ad 
mirable  translations  ;  one  evidence  of 
their  power  is  afforded  by  the  fact 
82 


The  Books  of  Life. 

that  every  new  age  of  literary  devel 
opment  and  every  new  literary  move 
ment  feels  compelled  to  translate  them 
afresh.  The  changes  of  taste  in 
English  literature  and  the  notable 
phases  through  which  it  has  passed 
since  the  days  of  the  Elizabethans 
might  be  traced  or  inferred  from  the 
successive  translations  of  Homer, 
from  the  work  of  Chapman  to  that 
of  Andrew  Lang.  One  needs  to  read 
many  books,  to  browse  in  many  fields, 
to  know  the  art  of  many  countries ; 
but  the  books  of  life  ought  to  form 
the  background  of  every  life  of 
thought  and  study.  They  need  not, 
indeed  they  cannot,  be  mastered  at 
once ;  but  by  reading  in  them  con 
stantly,  for  brief  or  for  long  intervals, 
one  comes  to  know  them  familiarly, 
and  almost  insensibly  to  gain  the  en 
richment  and  enlargement  which  they 
83 


The  Books  of  Life. 

offer.  Moreover,  they  afford  tenfold 
greater  and  more  lasting  delight,  rec 
reation,  and  variety  than  all  the  works 
of  lesser  writers.  Whoever  knows 
them  in  a  real  sense  knows  life,  hu 
manity,  art,  and  himself. 


84 


Chapter  VII. 
From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

rT1HE  study  which  has  found  its 
material  and  its  reward  in  Dante's 
"  Divine  Comedy "  or  in  Goethe's 
"  Faust "  is  the  best  possible  evidence 
of  the  inexhaustible  interest  in  the 
masterpieces  of  these  two  great  poets. 
Libraries  of  considerable  dimensions 
have  been  written  in  the  way  of  com 
mentaries  upon,  and  expositions  of, 
their  notable  works.  Many  of  these 
books  are,  it  is  true,  deficient  in  in 
sight  and  possessed  of  very  little 
power  of  interpretation  or  illumina 
tion  ;  they  are  the  products  of  a  bar 
ren,  dry-as-dust  industry,  which  has 
85  •  ' 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

expended  itself  upon  external  char 
acteristics  and  incidental  references. 
Nevertheless,  the  very  volume  and 
mass  of  these  secondary  books  wit 
ness  to  the  fertility  of  the  first-hand 
books  with  which  they  deal,  and  show 
beyond  dispute  that  men  have  an  in 
satiable  desire  to  get  at  their  interior 
meanings.  If  these  great  poems  had 
been  mere  illustrations  of  individual 
skill  and  gift,  this  interest  would  have 
long  ago  exhausted  itself.  That  sin 
gular  and  unsurpassed  qualities  of 
construction,  style,  and  diction  are 
present  in  "  Faust "  and  the  "  Divine 
Comedy"  need  not  be  emphasised, 
since  they  both  belong  to  the  very  high 
est  class  of  literary  production ;  but 
there  is  something  deeper  and  more 
vital  in  them  :  there  is  a  philosophy  or 
interpretation  of  life.  Each  of  these 
poems  is  a  revelation  of  what  man  is 
86 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

and  of  what  his  life  means ;  and  it  is 
this  deep  truth,  or  set  of  truths,  at 
the  heart  of  these  works  which  we 
are  always  striving  to  reach  and 
make  clear  to  ourselves. 

In  the  case  of  neither  poem  did  the 
writer  content  himself  with  an  exposi 
tion  of  his  own  experience;  in  both 
cases  there  is  an  attempt  to  embody 
and  put  in  concrete  form  an  immense 
section  of  universal  experience.  Nei 
ther  poem  could  have  been  written  if 
there  had  not  been  a  long  antecedent 
history,  rich  in  every  kind  and  quality 
of  human  contact  with  the  world,  and 
of  the  working  out  of  the  forces  which 
are  in  every  human  soul.  These  two 
forms  of  activity  represent  in  a  gene 
ral  way  what  men  have  learned  about 
themselves  and  their  surroundings ; 
and,  taken  together,  they  constitute 
the  material  out  of  which  interpreta- 
87 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

tions  and  explanations  of  human  life 
have  been  made.  These  explanations 
vary  according  to  the  genius,  the  en 
vironment,  and  the  history  of  races 
but  in  every  case  they  represent  the 
very  soul  of  race  life,  for  they  are  the 
spiritual  forms  in  which  that  life  has 
expressed  itself.  Other  forms  of  race 
activity,  however  valuable  or  beauti 
ful,  are  lost  in  the  passage  of  time, 
or  are  taken  up  and  absorbed,  and  so 
part  with  their  separate  and  individ 
ual  existence  ;  but  the  quintessence  of 
experience  and  thought  expressed  in 
great  works  of  art  is  gathered  up  and 
preserved,  as  Milton  said,  for  "  a  life 
beyond  life." 

Now,  it  is  upon  this  imperishable 
food  which  the  past  has  stored  up 
through  the  genius  of  great  artists 
that  later  generations  feed  and  nour 
ish  themselves.  It  is  through  inti- 
88 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

mate  contact  with  these  fundamental 
conceptions,  worked   out   with    such 
infinite  pain  and  patience,  that  the  in 
dividual    experience   is   broadened  to 
include    the    experience    of  the  race. 
This  contact  is  the  mystery  as  it  is 
the  source  of  culture.     No  one  can 
explain    the    transmission    of   power 
from  a  book  to  a  reader ;  but  all  his 
tory  bears  witness    to   the   fact   that 
such  transmissions  are  made.     Some 
times,  as   during  what  is   called   the 
Revival  of  Learning,  the  transmission 
is  so  general  and  so  genuine  that  the 
life    of   an    entire    society    is    visibly 
quickened    and    enlarged ;    indeed,  it 
is  not  too  much    to  say  that  an  en 
tire  civilisation  feels  the  effect.     The 
transmission    of  power,  the  transfer 
ence  of  vitality,  from  books  to  indi 
viduals  are  so  constant  and  common 
that  they  are  matters  of  universal  ex- 
89 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

perience.  Most  men  of  any  consid 
erable  culture  date  the  successive  en 
largements  of  their  intellectual  lives 
from  the  reading,  at  successive  periods, 
of  the  books  of  insight  and  power,  — 
the  books  that  deal  with  life  at  first 
hand.  There  are,  for  instance,  few 
men  of  a  certain  age  who  have  read 
widely  or  deeply  who  do  not  recall 
with  perennial  enthusiasm  the  days 
when  Carlyle  and  Emerson  fell  into 
their  hands.  They  may  have  re 
acted  radically  from  the  didactic 
teaching  of  both  writers,  but  they 
have  not  lost  the  impulse,  nor  have 
they  parted  with  the  enlargement  of 
thought  received  in  those  first  raptur 
ous  hours  of  discovery.  There  was 
wrought  in  them  then  changes  of 
view,  expansions  of  nature,  a  libera 
tion  of  life  which  can  never  be  lost. 
This  experience  is  repeated  so  long  as 
90 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

the  man  retains  the  power  of  growth 
and  so  long  as  he  keeps  in  contact 
with  the  great  writers.  Every  such 
contact  marks  a  new  stage  in  the 
process  of  culture.  This  means  not 
merely  the  deep  satisfaction  and  de 
light  which  are  involved  in  every 
fresh  contact  with  a  genuine  work  of 
art;  it  means  the  permanent  enrich 
ment  of  the  reader.  He  has  gained 
something  more  lasting  than  pleasure 
and  more  valuable  than  information : 
he  has  gained  a  new  view  of  life ;  he 
has  looked  again  into  the  heart  of 
humanity ;  he  has  felt  afresh  the  su 
preme  interest  which  always  attaches 
to  any  real  contact  with  the  life  of  the 
race.  And  all  this  comes  to  him  not 
only  because  the  life  of  the  race  is  es 
sentially  dramatic  and,  therefore,  of 
quite  inexhaustible  interest,  but  be 
cause  that  life  is  essentially  a  revela- 
91 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

tion.  A  series  of  fundamental  truths 
is  being  disclosed  through  the  simple 
process  of  living,  and  whoever  touches 
the  deep  life  of  men  in  the  great 
works  of  art  comes  in  contact  also 
with  these  fundamental  truths.  Who 
ever  reads  the  "  Divine  Comedy  "  and 
"Faust"  for  the  first  time  discovers 
new  realms  of  truth  for  himself,  and 
gains  not  only  the  joy  of  discovery, 
but  an  immense  addition  of  territory 
as  well. 

The  most  careless  and  superficial 
readers  do  not  remain  untouched  by 
the  books  of  life ;  they  fail  to  under 
stand  them  or  get  the  most  out  of 
them,  but  they  do  not  escape  the 
spell  which  they  all  possess,  —  the 
power  of  compelling  the  attention 
and  stirring  the  heart.  Not  many 
years  ago  the  stories  of  the^  Russian 
novelists  were  in  all  hands.  That 
92 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

the  fashion  has  passed  is  evident 
enough,  and  it  is  also  evident  that  the 
craving  for  these  books  was  largely 
a  fashion.  Nevertheless,  the  fashion 
itself  was  due  to  the  real  power  which 
those  stories  revealed,  and  which  con 
stitutes  their  lasting  contribution  to 
the  world's  literature.  They  were 
touched  with  a  profound  sadness, 
which  was  exhaled  like  a  mist  by  the 
conditions  they  portrayed ;  they  were 
full  of  a  sympathy  born  of  knowledge 
and  of  sorrow ;  their  roots  were  in 
the  rich  soil  of  the  life  they  described. 
The  latest  of  them,  Count  Tolstoi's 
"  Master  and  Man,"  is  one  of  those 
masterpieces  which  take  rank  at  once, 
not  by  reason  of  their  magnitude,  but 
by  reason  of  a  certain  beautiful  quality 
which  comes  only  to  the  man  whose 
heart  is  pressed  against  the  heart  of 
his  theme,  and  who  divines  what  life 
93 


From  the  Book  to  the  Reader. 

is  in  the  inarticulate  soul  of  his  brother 
man.  Such  books  are  the  rich  mate 
rial  of  culture  to  the  man  who  reads 
them  with  his  heart,  because  they  add 
to  his  experience  a  kind  of  experience 
otherwise  inaccessible  to  him,  which 
quickens,  refreshes,  and  broadens  his 
own  nature. 


94 


Chapter  VIII. 
By  Way  of  Illustration. 

'T'HE  peculiar  quality  which  culture 
imparts  is  beyond  the  compre 
hension  of  a  child,  and  yet  it  is  some 
thing  so  definite  and  engaging  that  a 
child  may  recognise  its  presence  and 
feel  its  attraction.  One  of  the  spe 
cial  pieces  of  good  fortune  which  fell 
to  my  boyhood  was  companionship 
with  a  man  whose  note  of  distinction, 
while  not  entirely  clear  to  me,  threw 
a  spell  over  me.  I  knew  other  men 
of  greater  force  and  of  larger  scholar 
ship  ;  but  no  one  else  gave  me  such 
an  impression  of  balance,  ripeness,  and 
fineness  of  quality.  I  not  only  felt  a 
95 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

peculiarly  searching  influence  flowing 
from  one  who  graciously  put  himself 
on  my  level  of  intelligence,  but  I  felt 
also  an  impulse  to  emulate  a  nature 
which  satisfied  my  imagination  com 
pletely.  Other  men  of  ability  whose 
conversation  I  heard  filled  me  with 
admiration ;  this  man  made  the  world 
larger  and  richer  to  my  boyish  thought. 
There  was  no  didacticism  on  his  part ; 
there  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  simplicity 
so  great  that  I  felt  entirely  at  home 
with  him ;  but  he  was  so  thoroughly 
a  citizen  of  the  world  that  I  caught 
a  glimpse  of  the  world  in  his  most 
casual  talk.  I  got  a  sense  of  the 
largeness  and  richness  of  life  from 
him.  I  did  not  know  what  it  was 
which  laid  such  hold  on  my  mind, 
but  I  saw  later  that  it  was  the  remark 
able  culture  of  the  man,  —  a  culture 
made  possible  by  many  fortunate  con- 
96 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

ditions  of  wealth,  station,  travel,  and 
education,  and  expressing  itself  in  a 
peculiar  largeness  of  vision  and  sweet 
ness  of  spirit.  In  this  man's  friend 
ship  I  was  for  the  moment  lifted  out 
of  my  own  crudity  into  that  vast 
movement  and  experience  in  which 
all  the  races  have  shared. 

I  am  often  reminded  of  this  early 
impulse  and  enthusiasm,  but  there  are 
occasions  when  its  significance  and 
value  become  especially  clear  to  me. 
It  was  brought  forcibly  to  my  mind 
several  years  ago  by  an  hour  or  two 
of  talk  with  one  who,  as  truly  as  any 
other  American,  stands  as  a  repre 
sentative  man  of  culture  ;  one,  that  is, 
whose  large  scholarship  has  been  so 
completely  absorbed  that  it  has  en 
riched  the  very  texture  of  his  mind, 
and  given  him  the  gift  of  sharing  the 
experience  of  the  race.  It  was  on  an 
7  97 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

evening  when  a  play  of  Sophocles  was 
to  be  rendered  by  the  students  of  a 
certain  university  in  which  the  tradi 
tion  of  culture  has  never  wholly  died 
out,  and  I  led  the  talk  along  the 
lines  of  the  play.  I  was  rewarded  by 
an  hour  of  such  delight  as  comes  only 
from  the  best  kind  of  talk,  and  I  felt 
anew  the  peculiar  charm  and  power 
of  culture.  For  what  I  got  that  en 
riched  me  and  prepared  me  for  real 
comprehension  of  one  of  the  greatest 
works  of  art  in  all  literature  was  not 
information,  but  atmosphere.  I  saw 
rising  about  me  the  vanished  life, 
which  the  dramatist  knew  so  well  that 
its  secrets  of  conviction  and  tempera 
ment  were  all  open  to  him ;  in  archi 
tecture,  poetry,  religion,  politics,  and 
manners,  it  was  quietly  rebuilded 
for  me  in  such  wise  that  my  own 
imagination  was  stirred  to  meet  the 
98 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

talker  half-way,  and  to  fill  in  the  out 
lines  of  a  picture  so  swiftly  and  skil 
fully  sketched.  When  I  went  to  the 
play  I  went  as  a  contemporary  of  its 
writer  might  have  gone.  I  did  not 
need  to  enter  into  it,  for  it  had  already 
entered  into  me.  A  man  of  scholar 
ship  could  have  set  the  period  before 
me  in  a  mass  of  facts ;  a  man  of  cul 
ture  alone  could  give  me  power  to 
share,  for  an  evening  at  least,  its  spirit 
and  life. 

These  personal  illustrations  will  be 
pardoned,  because  they  bring  out  in 
the  most  concrete  way  that  special 
quality  which  marks  the  possession 
of  culture  in  the  deepest  sense.  That 
quality  allies  it  very  closely  with  genius 
itself,  in  certain  aspects  of  that  rare 
and  inexplicable  gift.  For  one  of  the 
most  characteristic  qualities  of  genius 
is  its  power  of  divination,  of  sharing 
99 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

alien  or  diverse  experiences.  It  is 
this  peculiar  insight  which  puts  the 
great  dramatists  in  possession  of  the 
secrets  of  so  many  temperaments, 
the  springs  of  so  many  different  per 
sonalities,  the  atmosphere  of  such  re 
mote  periods  of  time,  —  which,  in  a 
way,  gives  them  power  to  make  the 
dead  live  again ;  for  Shakespeare  can 
stand  at  the  tomb  of  Cleopatra  and 
evoke  not  the  shade,  but  the  passion 
ate  woman  herself  out  of  the  dust  in 
which  she  sleeps.  There  has  been, 
perhaps,  no  more  luminous  example 
of  the  faculty  of  sharing  the  experi 
ence  of  a  past  age,  of  entering  into 
the  thought  and  feeling  of  a  vanished 
race,  than  the  peculiar  divination  and 
rehabilitation  of  certain  extinct  phases 
of  emotion  and  thought  which  one 
finds  in  the  pages  of  Walter  Pater. 
In  those  pages  there  are,  it  is  true, 
100 


By  Way  of  Illustration; 

occasional  lapses  from  a  perfectly 
sound  method ;  there  is  at  times  a 
loss  of  simplicity,  a  cloying  sweet 
ness  in  the  style  of  this  accomplished 
writer.  These  are,  however,  the  perils 
of  a  very  sensitive  temperament,  an 
intense  feeling  for  beauty,  and  a  cer 
tain  seclusion  from  the  affairs  of  life. 
That  which  characterises  Mr.  Pater 
at  all  times  is  his  power  of  putting 
himself  amid  conditions  that  are  not 
only  extinct,  but  obscure  and  elusive ; 
of  winding  himself  back,  as  it  were, 
into  the  primitive  Greek  conscious 
ness  and  recovering  for  the  moment 
the  world  as  the  Greeks  saw,  or, 
rather,  felt  it.  It  is  an  easy  matter  to 
mass  the  facts  about  any  given  period  ; 
it  is  a  very  different  and  a  very  diffi 
cult  matter  to  set  those  facts  in  vital 
relations  to  each  other,  to  see  them 
in  true  prospective.  And  the  difficul- 

101 


By  'Way  of  Illustration. 

ties  are  immensely  increased  when  the 
period  is  not  only  remote,  but  defi 
cient  in  definite  registry  of  thought 
and  feeling ;  when  the  record  of  what 
it  believed  and  felt  does  not  exist  by 
itself,  but  must  be  deciphered  from 
those  works  of  art  in  which  is  pre 
served  the  final  form  of  thought  and 
feeling,  and  in  which  are  gathered 
and  merged  a  great  mass  of  ideas 
and  emotions. 

This  is  especially  true  of  the  more 
subtle  and  elusive  Greek  myths,  which 
were  in  no  case  creations  of  the  in 
dividual  imagination  or  of  definite 
periods  of  time,  but  which  were  fed 
by  many  tributaries,  very  slowly  tak 
ing  shape  out  of  general  but  shadowy 
impressions,  widely  diffused  but  vague 
ideas,  deeply  felt  but  obscure  emo 
tions.  To  get  at  the  heart  of  one  of 
these  stories  one  must  be  able  not  only 


1 02 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

to  enter  into  the  thought  of  the  un 
known  poets  who  made  their  contri 
butions  to  the  myth,  but  must  also 
be  able  to  disentangle  the  threads  of 
idea  and  feeling  so  deftly  woven  to 
gether,  and  follow  each  back  to  its 
shadowy  beginning.  To  do  this,  one 
must  have  not  only  knowledge,  but 
sympathy  and  imagination,  —  those 
closely  related  qualities  which  get  at 
the  soul  of  knowledge  and  make  it 
live  again ;  those  qualities  which  the 
man  of  culture  shares  in  no  small 
measure  with  the  man  of  genius.  In 
his  studies  of  such  myths  as  those 
which  gather  about  Dionysius  and 
Demeter  this  is  precisely  what  Mr. 
Pater  did.  He  not  only  marked  out 
distinctly  the  courses  of  the  main 
streams,  but  he  followed  back  the 
rivulets  to  their  fountain-heads ;  he 
not  only  mastered  the  thought  of  an 
103 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

extinct  people,  but,  what  is  much 
more  difficult,  he  put  off  his  knowl 
edge  and  put  on  their  ignorance ;  he 
not  only  entered  into  their  thought 
about  the  world  of  nature  which  sur 
rounded  them,  but  he  entered  into 
their  feeling  about  it.  Very  lightly 
touched  and  charming  is,  for  instance, 
his  description  of  the  habits  and  haunts 
and  worship  of  Demeter,  the  current 
impressions  of  her  service  and  place 
in  the  life  of  the  world  :  — 

"  Demeter  haunts  the  fields  in  spring, 
when  the  young  lambs  are  dropped ;  she 
visits  the  barns  in  autumn ;  she  takes  part 
in  mowing  and  binding  up  the  corn,  and 
is  the  goddess  of  sheaves.  She  presides 
over  the  pleasant,  significant  details  of  the 
farm,  the  threshing-floor,  and  the  full  gran 
ary,  and  stands  beside  the  woman  baking 
bread  at  the  oven.  With  these  fancies  are 
connected  certain  simple  rites,  the  half- 
104 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

understood  local  observance  and  the  half- 
believed  local  legend  reacting  capriciously 
on  each  other.  They  leave  her  a  fragment 
of  bread  and  a  morsel  of  meat  at  the  cross 
roads  to  take  on  her  journey  ;  and  perhaps 
some  real  Demeter  carries  them  away,  as 
she  wanders  through  the  country.  The 
incidents  of  their  yearly  labour  become  to 
them  acts  of  worship ;  they  seek  her  bless 
ing  through  many  expressive  names,  and 
almost  catch  sight  of  her  at  dawn  or  even 
ing,  in  the  nooks  of  the  fragrant  fields. 
She  lays  a  finger  on  the  grass  at  the  road 
side,  and  some  new  flower  comes  up.  All 
the  picturesque  implements  of  country  life 
are  hers;  the  poppy  also,  emblem  of  an 
exhaustless  fertility,  and  full  of  mysterious 
juices  for  the  alleviation  of  pain.  The 
country-woman  who  puts  her  child  to 
sleep  in  the  great,  cradle-like  basket  for 
winnowing  the  corn  remembers  Demeter 
Kourotrophos,  the  mother  of  corn  and 
children  alike,  and  makes  it  a  little  coat 
out  of  the  dress  worn  by  its  father  at  his 
I05 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

initiation  into  her  mysteries.  .  .  .  She  lies 
on  the  ground  out-of-doors  on  summer 
nights,  and  becomes  wet  with  the  dew. 
She  grows  young  again  every  spring,  yet  is 
of  great  age,  the  wrinkled  woman  of  the 
Homeric  hymn,  who  becomes  the  nurse  of 
Demophoon." 

This  bit  of  description  moves  with 
so  light  a  foot  that  one  forgets,  as  true 
art  always  makes  one  forget,  the  mass 
of  hard  and  scattered  materials  which 
lie  back  of  it,  materials  which  would 
not  have  yielded  their  secret  of  unity 
and  vitality  save  to  imagination  and 
sympathy;  to  knowledge  which  has 
ripened  into  culture.  But  the  recov 
ery  of  such  a  story,  the  reconstruc 
tion  of  such  a  figure,  are  not  af 
fected  by  description  alone ;  one  must 
penetrate  to  the  heart  of  the  myth, 
and  master  the  significance  of  the 
woman  transformed  by  idealisation 
106 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

into  a  beneficent  and  much  labouring 
goddess.  We  must  go  with  Mr. 
Pater  a  step  farther  if  we  would  under 
stand  how  a  man  of  culture  divines 
the  deeper  experiences  of  an  alien 
race :  — 

u  Three  profound  ethical  conceptions, 
three  impressive  sacred  figures,  have  now 
defined  themselves  for  the  Greek  imagina 
tion,  condensed  from  all  the  traditions 
which  have  now  been  traced,  from  the 
hymns  of  the  poets,  from  the  instinctive 
and  unformulated  mysticism  of  primitive 
minds.  Demeter  is  become  the  divine, 
sorrowing  mother.  Kore,  the  goddess  of 
summer,  is  become  Persephone,  the  goddess 
of  death,  still  associated  with  the  forms  and 
odours  of  flowers  and  fruit,  yet  as  one  risen 
from  the  dead  also,  presenting  one  side  of 
her  ambiguous  nature  to  men's  gloomier 
fancies.  Thirdly,  there  is  the  image  of 
Demeter  enthroned,  chastened  by  sorrow, 
and  somewhat  advanced  in  age,  blessing 
107 


By  Way  of  Illustration. 

the  earth  in  her  joy  at  the  return  of  Kore. 
The  myth  has  now  entered  upon  the  third 
phase  of  its  life,  in  which  it  becomes  the 
property  of  those  more  elevated  spirits, 
who,  in  the  decline  of  the  Greek  religion, 
pick  and  choose  and  modify,  with  perfect 
freedom  of  mind,  whatever  in  it  may  seem 
adapted  to  minister  to  their  culture.  In 
this  way  the  myths  of  the  Greek  religion 
become  parts  of  an  ideal,  visible  embodi 
ments  of  the  susceptibilities  and  intentions 
of  the  nobler  kind  of  souls;  and  it  is  to 
this  latest  phase  of  mythological  develop 
ment  that  the  highest  Greek  sculpture 
allies  itself." 

This  illustration  of  the  divination 
by  which  the  man  of  culture  possesses 
himself  of  a  half-forgotten  and  ob 
scurely  recorded  experience  and  re 
habilitates  and  interprets  it,  is  so 
complete  that  it  makes  amplification 
superfluous. 


108 


Chapter  IX. 
Personality. 

"  TT  is  undeniable,"  says  Matthew 
Arnold,  "that  the  exercise  of 
a  creative  power,  that  a  free  creative 
activity  is  the  highest  function  of  man  ; 
it  is  proved  to  be  so  by  man's  rinding 
in  it  his  true  happiness."  If  this  be 
true,  and  the  heart  of  man  apart  from 
all  testimony  affirms  it,  then  the  great 
books  not  only  embody  and  express 
the  genius  and  vital  knowledge  of  the 
race  which  created  them,  but  they  are 
the  products  of  the  highest  activity  of 
man  in  the  finest  moments  of  ;iis  life. 
They  represent  a  high  felicity  no  less 
than  a  noble  gift ;  they  are  the  memo- 
log 


Personality. 

rials  of  a  happiness  which  may  have 
been  brief,  but  which,  while  it  lasted, 
had  a  touch  of  the  divine  in  it ;  for 
men  are  never  nearer  divinity  than  in 
their  creative  impulses  and  moments. 
Homer  may  have  been  blind ;  but  if 
he  composed  the  epics  which  bear  his 
name  he  must  have  known  moments 
of  purer  happiness  than  his  most  for 
tunate  contemporary ;  Dante  missed 
the  lesser  comforts  of  life,  but  there 
were  hours  of  transcendent  joy  in  his 
lonely  career.  For  the  highest  joy 
of  which  men  taste  is  the  full,  free, 
and  noble  putting  forth  of  the  power 
that  is  in  them  ;  no  moments  in  human 
experience  are  so  thrilling  as  those  in 
which  a  man's  soul  goes  out  from  him 
into  some  adequate  and  beautiful  form 
of  expression.  In  the  act  of  creation 
a  man  incorporates  his  own  personality 
into  the  visible  world  about  him,  and 
no 


Personality. 

in  a  true  and  noble  sense  gives  himself 
to  his  fellows.  When  an  artist  looks 
at  his  work  he  'sees  himself;  he  has 
performed  the  highest  task  of  which 
he  is  capable,  and  fulfilled  the  highest 
purpose  for  which  he  was  planned  by 
an  artist  greater  than  himself. 

The  rapture  of  the  creative  mood 
and  moment  is  the  reward  of  the  little 
group  whose  touch  on  any  kind  of 
material  is  imperishable.  It  comes 
when  the  spell  of  inspired  work  is  on 
them,  or  in  the  moment  which  follows 
immediately  on  completion  and  before 
the  reaction  of  depression  —  which  is 
the  heavy  penalty  of  the  artistic  tem 
perament  —  has  set  in.  Balzac  knew 
it  in  that  frenzy  of  work  which  seized 
him  for  days  together ;  and  Thackeray 
knew  it,  as  he  confesses,  when  he  had 
put  the  finishing  touches  on  that 
striking  scene  in  which  Rawdon 
in 


Personality. 

Crawley  thrashes  Lord  Steyne  within 
an  inch  of  his  wicked  life.  The  great 
novelist,  who  happened  also  to  be  a 
great  writer,  knew  that  the  whole 
scene,  in  conception  and  execution, 
was  a  stroke  of  genius.  But  while 
this  supreme  rapture  belongs  to  a 
chosen  few,  it  may  be  shared  by  all 
those  who  are  ready  to  open  the  ima 
gination  to  its  approach.  It  is  one  of 
the  great  rewards  of  the  artist  that 
while  other  kinds  of  joy  are  often 
pathetically  short-lived,  his  joy,  hav 
ing  brought  forth  enduring  works,  is, 
in  a  sense,  imperishable.  And  it  not 
only  endures ;  it  renews  itself  in  kin 
dred  moments  and  experiences  which 
it  bestows  upon  those  who  approach 
it  sympathetically.  There  are  lines 
in  the  "  Divine  Comedy  "  which  thrill 
us  to-day  as  they  must  have  thrilled 
Dante ;  there  are  passages  in  the 

112 


Personality. 

Shakespearian  plays  and  sonnets  which 
make  a  riot  in  the  blood  to-day  as  they 
doubtless  set  the  poet's  pulses  beating 
three  centuries  ago.     The  student  of 
literature,  therefore,  finds  in  its  noblest 
works  not  only  the  ultimate  results  of 
race  experience  and  the  characteristic 
quality  of  race  genius,  but  the  highest 
activity  of  the  greatest  minds  in  their 
happiest  and  most  expansive  moments. 
In  this  commingling  of  the  best  that 
is  in  the  race  and  the  best  that  is  in 
the  individual  lies  the  mystery  of  that 
double  revelation  which  makes  every 
work  of  art  a  disclosure  not  only  of 
the  nature  of  the  man  behind  it,  but 
of  all  men  behind  him.     In  this  com 
mingling,  too,  is  preserved  the  most 
precious  deposit  of  what  the  race  has 
been  and  done,  and  of  what  the  man 
has  seen,  felt,  and  known.      In  the 
nature  of  things  no  educational  mate- 
8  113 


Personality. 

•x 

rial  can  be  richer ;  none  so  funda 
mentally  expansive  and  illuminative. 
This  contact  with  the  richest  per 
sonalities  the  world  has  produced  is  one 
of  the  deepest  sources  of  culture  ;  for 
nothing  is  more  truly  educative  than 
association  with  persons  of  the  high 
est  intelligence  and  power.  When  a 
man  recalls  his  educational  experience, 
he  finds  that  many  of  his  richest  op 
portunities  were  not  identified  with 
subjects  or  systems  or  apparatus,  but 
with  teachers.  There  is  fundamental 
truth  in  Emerson's  declaration  that 
it  makes  very  little  difference  what 
you  study,  but  that  it  is  in  the  high 
est  degree  important  with  whom  you 
study.  There  flows  from  the  living 
teacher  a  power  which  no  text-book 
can  compass  or  contain,  —  the  power 
of  liberating  the  imagination  and  setting 
the  student  free  to  become  an  origi- 
114 


Personality. 

nal  investigator.  Text-books  supply 
methods,  information,  and  discipline ; 
teachers  impart  the  breath  of  life  by 
giving  us  inspiration  and  impulse. 
Now,  the  great  books  are  different 
from  all  other  books  in  their  posses 
sion  of  this  mysterious  vital  force ; 
they  are  not  only  text-books  by  reason 
of  the  knowledge  they  contain,  but 
they  are  also  books  of  life  by  reason 
of  the  disclosure  of  personality  which 
they  make.  The  student  of"  Faust " 
receives  from  that  drama  not  only 
the  poet's  interpretation  of  man's  life 
in  the  world,  but  he  is  also  brought 
under  the  spell  of  Goethe's  personality, 
and,  in  a  real  sense,  gets  from  his  book 
that  which  his  friends  got  from  the 
man.  This  in  not  true  of  secondary 
books ;  it  is  true  only  of  first-hand 
books.  Secondary  books  are  often 
products  of  skill,  pieces  of  well- 


Personality. 

wrought  but  entirely  self-conscious 
craftsmanship ;  first-hand  books  are 
always  the  expression  of  what  is 
deepest,  most  original  and  distinctive 
in  the  nature  which  produces  them. 
In  such  books,  therefore,  we  get  not 
only  the  skill,  the  art,  the  knowledge ; 
we  get,  above  all,  the  man.  There  is 
added  to  what  he  has  to  give  us  of 
thought  or  form  the  inestimable  boon 
of  his  companionship. 

The  reality  of  this  element  of  per 
sonality  and  the  force  for  culture  which 
resides  in  it  are  clearly  illustrated  by 
a  comparison  of  the  works  of  Plato 
with  those  of  Aristotle.  Aristotle  was 
for  many  centuries  the  first  name 
in  philosophy,  and  is  still  one  of  the 
greatest;  but  Aristotle,  although  a 
student  of  the  principles  of  the  art 
of  literature  and  a  critic  of  deep  phil 
osophical  insight,  was  primarily  a 
116 


Personality. 

thinker,  not  an  artist.  One  goes  to 
him  for  discipline,  for  thought,  for 
training  in  a  very  high  sense;  one 
does  not  go  to  him  for  form,  beauty, 
or  personality.  It  is  a  clear,  distinct, 
logical  order  of  ideas,  a  definite  system 
which  he  gives  us ;  not  a  view  of  life, 
a  disclosure  of  the  nature  of  man,  a 
synthesis  of  ideas  touched  with  beauty, 
dramatically  arranged  and  set  in  the 
atmosphere  of  Athenian  life.  For 
these  things  one  goes  to  Plato,  who 
is  not  only  a  thinker,  but  an  artist  of 
wonderful  gifts,  —  one  who  so  closely 
and  beautifully  relates  Greek  thought 
to  Greek  life  that  we  seem  not  to  be 
studying  a  system  of  philosophy,  but 
mingling  with  the  society  of  Athens 
in  its  most  fascinating  groups  and  at 
its  most  significant  moments.  To  the 
student  of  Aristotle  the  personality 
of  the  writer  counts  for  nothing ;  to 
117 


Personality. 

the  student  of  the  "  Dialogues,"  on 
the  other  hand,  the  personality  of 
Plato  counts  for  everything.  If  we 
approach  him  as  a  thinker,  it  is  true, 
we  discard  everything  except  his 
ideas ;  but  if  we  approach  him  as  a 
great  writer,  ideas  are  but  part  of  the 
rich  and  illuminating  whole  which  he 
offers  us.  One  can  imagine  a  man 
fully  acquainting  himself  with  the 
work  of  Aristotle  and  yet  remaining 
almost  devoid  of  culture ;  but  one 
cannot  imagine  a  man  coming  into 
intimate  companionship  with  Plato 
and  remaining  untouched  by  his  rich, 
representative  personality. 

From  such  a  companionship  some 
thing  must  flow  besides  an  enlarge 
ment  of  ideas  or  a  development  of 
the  power  of  clear  thinking ;  there 
must  flow  also  the  stimulating  and 
illuminating  impulse  of  a  fresh  contact 
118 


Personality. 

with  a  great  nature ;  there  must  result 
a  certain  liberation  of  the  imagination, 
a  certain  widening  of  experience,  a 
certain  ripening  of  the  mind  of  the 
student.  The  beauty  of  form,  the 
varied  and  vital  aspects  of  religious, 
social,  and  individual  character,  the 
splendour  and  charm  of  a  nobly  or 
dered  art  in  temples,  speech,  manners, 
and  dress,  the  constant  suggestion  of 
the  deep  humanism  behind  that  art 
and  of  the  freshness  and  reality  of  all 
its  forms  of  expression,  —  these  things 
are  as  much  and  as  great  a  part  of 
the  "  Dialogues  "  as  the  thought ;  and 
they  are  full  of  that  quality  which 
enriches  and  ripens  the  mind  that 
comes  under  their  influence.  In  these 
qualities  of  his  style,  quite  as  much  as 
in  his  ideas,  is  to  be  found  the  real 
Plato,  the  great  artist,  who  refused  to 
consider  philosophy  as  an  abstract 
119 


Personality. 

creation  of  the  mind,  existing,  so  far 
as  man  is  concerned,  apart  from  the 
mind  which  formulates  it,  but  who 
saw  life  in  its  totality  and  made 
thought  luminous  and  real  by  dis 
closing  it  at  all  points  against  the 
background  of  the  life,  the  nature, 
and  the  habits  of  the  thinker.  This 
is  the  method  of  culture  as  distin 
guished  from  that  of  scholarship ;  and 
this  is  also  the  disclosure  of  the  per 
sonality  of  Plato  as  distinguished  from 
his  philosophical  genius.  Whoever 
studies  the  "  Dialogues "  with  his 
heart  as  well  as  with  his  mind  comes 
into  persona  relations  with  the  richest 
mind  of  antiquity. 


120 


Chapter  X. 
Liberation  through  Ideas. 

ATATTHEW   ARNOLD  was  in 

the  habit  of  dwelling  on  the 
importance  of  a  free  movement  of 
fresh  ideas  through  society ;  the  men 
who  are  in  touch  with  such  move 
ments  are  certain  to  be  productive, 
while  those  whose  minds  are  not  fed 
by  this  stimulus  are  likely  to  remain 
unfruitful.  One  of  the  most  suggest 
ive  and  beautiful  facts  in  the  spiritual 
history  of  men  is  the  exhilaration 
which  a  great  new  thought  brings 
with  it ;  the  thrilling  moments  in  his 
tory  are  the  moments  of  contact  be 
tween  such  ideas  and  the  minds  which 

121 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

are  open  to  their  approach.  It  is  true 
that  fresh  ideas  often  gain  acceptance 
slowly  and  against  great  odds  in  the 
way  of  organised  error  and  of  individ 
ual  inertness  and  dulness ;  neverthe 
less,  it  is  also  true  that  certain  great 
ideas  rapidly  clarify  themselves  in  the 
thought  of  almost  every  century. 
They  are  opposed  and  rejected  by  a 
multitude,  but  they  are  in  the  air,  as 
we  say ;  they  seem  to  diffuse  them 
selves  through  all  fields  of  thought, 
and  they  are  often  worked  out  har 
moniously  in  different  departments 
by  men  who  have  no  concert  of  action, 
but  whose  minds  are  open  and  sensi 
tive  to  these  invisible  currents  of  light 
and  power. 

The  first  and  the  most  enduring  re 
sult  of  this  movement  of  ideas  is  the 
enlargement  of  the  thoughts  of  men 
about  themselves  and  their  world. 

122 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

Every  great  new  truth  compels, 
sooner  or  later,  a  readjustment  of  the 
whole  body  of  organised  truth  as  men 
hold  it.  The  fresh  thought  about  the 
physical  constitution  of  man  bears  its 
fruit  ultimately  in  some  fresh  notion 
of  his  spiritual  constitution ;  the  new 
fact  in  geology  does  not  spend  its 
force  until  it  has  wrought  a  modifica 
tion  of  the  view  of  the  creative  method 
and  the  age  of  man  in  the  world ;  the 
fresh  conception  of  the  method  of 
evolution  along  material  and  physical 
lines  slowly  reconstructs  the  philos 
ophy  of  mental  and  spiritual  develop 
ment.  Every  new  thought  relates 
itself  finally  to  all  thought,  and  is 
like  die  forward  step  which  continu 
ally  changes  the  horizon  about  the 
traveller. 

The  history  of  man  is  the  story  of 
the  ideas  he  has  entertained  and  ac- 
123 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

cepted,  and  of  his  struggle  to  incor 
porate  these  ideas  into  laws,  customs, 
institutions,  and  character.  At  the 
heart  of  every  race  one  finds  certain 
ideas,  not  always  clearly  seen  nor  often 
definitely  formulated  save  by  a  few 
persons,  but  unconsciously  held  with 
deathless  tenacity  and  illustrated  by  a 
vast  range  of  action  and  achievement ; 
at  the  heart  of  every  great  civilisation 
one  finds  a  few  dominant  and  vital 
conceptions  which  give  a  certain  co 
herence  and  unity  to  a  vast  movement 
of  life.  Now,  the  books  of  life,  as 
has  already  been  said,  hold  their  place 
in  universal  literature  because  they 
reveal  and  illustrate,  in  symbol  and 
personality,  these  fundamental  ideas 
with  supreme  power  and  felicity. 
The  large  body  of  literature  in  prose 
and  verse  which  is  put  between  the 
covers  of  the  Old  Testament  not  only 
124 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

gives  us  an  account  of  what  the  He 
brew  race  did  in  the  world,  but  of  its 
ideas  about  that  world,  and  of  the 
character  which  it  formed  for  itself 
largely  as  the  fruit  of  those  ideas. 
Those  ideas,  it  need  hardly  be  said, 
not  only  registered  a  great  advance  on 
the  ideas  which  preceded  them,  but 
remain  in  many  respects  the  most 
fundamental  ideas  which  the  race  as  a 
whole  has  accepted.  They  lifted  the 
men  to  whom  they  were  originally  re 
vealed,  or  who  accepted  them,  to  a 
great  height  of  spiritual  and  moral 
vision,  and  a  race  character  was  or 
ganised  about  them  of  the  most  power 
ful  and  persistent  type.  The  modern 
student  of  the  Old  Testament  is  born 
into  a  very  different  atmosphere  from 
that  in  which  these  conceptions  of 
man  and  the  universe  were  originally 
formed  ;  but  though  they  have  largely 
125 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

lost  their  novelty,  they  have  not  lost 
the  power  of  enlargement  and  expan 
sion  which  were  in  them  at  the  be 
ginning. 

In  his  own  history  every  man 
repeats,  within  certain  limits,  the 
history  of  the  race ;  and  the  inex 
haustible  educational  value  of  race 
experience  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  so 
completely  parallels  the  history  of 
every  member  of  the  race.  Child 
hood  has  the  fancies  and  faiths  of  the 
earliest  ages ;  youth  has  visions  and 
dreams  which  form,  generation  after 
generation,  a  kind  of  contemporary 
mythology ;  maturity  aspires  after 
and  sometimes  attains  the  repose,  the 
clear  intelligence,  the  catholic  outlook 
of  the  best  modern  type  of  mind  and 
character.  In  some  form  every  mod 
ern  man  travels  the  road  over  which 
his  predecessors  have  passed,  but  he 
126 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

no  longer  blazes  his  path ;  a  highway 
has  been  built  for  him.  He  is  spared 
the  immense  toil  of  formulating  the 
ideas  by  which  he  lives,  and  of  pass 
ing  through  the  searching  experience 
which  is  often  the  only  approach  to 
the  greatest  truths.  If  he  has  origi 
native  power,  he  forms  ideas  of  his 
own,  but  they  are  based  on  a  massive 
foundation  of  ideas  which  others  have 
worked  out  for  him ;  he  passes 
through  his  own  individual  experi 
ence,  but  he  inherits  the  results  of  a 
multitude  of  experiences  of  which 
nothing  remains  save  certain  final 
generalisations.  Every  intelligent  man 
is  born  into  possession  of  a  world  of 
knowledge  and  truth  which  has  been 
explored,  settled,  and  organised  for 
him.  To  the  discovery  and  regula 
tion  of  this  world  every  race  has 
worked  with  more  or  less  definiteness 
127 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

of  aim,  and  the  total  result  of  the  in 
calculable  labours  and  sufferings  of 
men  is  the  somewhat  intangible  but 
very  real  thing  we  call  civilisation. 

At  the  heart  of  civilisation,  and  de 
termining  its  form  and  quality,  is  that 
group  of  vital  ideas  to  which  each 
race  has  contributed  according  to  its 
intelligence  and  power,  —  the  measure 
of  the  greatness  of  a  race  being  deter 
mined  by  the  value  of  its  contribution 
to  this  organised  spiritual  life  of  the 
world.  This  body  of  ideas  is  the 
highest  product  of  the  life  of  men 
under  historic  conditions ;  it  is  the 
quintessence  of  whatever  was  best  and 
enduring  not  only  in  their  thought, 
but  in  their  feeling,  their  instinct, 
their  affections,  their  activities ;  and 
the  degree  in  which  the  man  of  to-day 
is  able  to  appropriate  this  rich  re 
sult  of  the  deepest  life  of  the  past  is 
128 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

the  measure  of  his  culture.  One  may 
be  well-trained  and  carefully  disci 
plined,  and  yet  have  no  share  in  this 
organised  life  of  the  race  ;  but  no  one 
can  possess  real  culture  who  has  not, 
according  to  his  ability,  entered  into 
it  by  making  it  a  part  of  himself.  It 
is  by  contact  with  these  great  ideas 
that  the  individual  mind  puts  itself  in 
touch  with  the  universal  mind  and  in 
definitely  expands  and  enriches  itself. 
Culture  rests  on  ideas  rather  than 
on  knowledge ;  its  distinctive  use  of 
knowledge  is  to  gain  material  for  ideas. 
For  this  reason  the  "  Iliad "  and 
"  Odyssey  "  are  of  more  importance 
than  Thucydides  and  Curtius.  For 
Homer  was  not  only  in  a  very  im 
portant  sense  the  historian  of  his  race  ; 
he  was,  above  all,  the  expositor  of  its 
ideas.  There  is  involved  in  the  very 
structure  of  the  Greek  epics  the  fun- 
9  129 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

damental  conception  of  life  as  the 
Greeks  looked  at  it ;  their  view  of 
reverence,  worship,  law,  obligation, 
subordination,  personality.  No  one 
can  be  said  to  have  read  these  poems 
in  any  real  sense  until  he  has  made 
these  ideas  clear  to  himself;  and  these 
ideas  carry  with  them  a  definite  en 
largement  of  thought.  When  a  man 
has  gotten  a  clear  view  of  the  ideas 
about  life  held  by  a  great  race,  he  has 
gone  a  long  way  towards  self-educa 
tion, —  so  rich  and  illuminative  are 
these  central  conceptions  around  which 
the  life  of  each  race  has  been  organ 
ised.  To  multiply  these  ideas  by 
broad  contact  with  the  books  of  life  is 
to  expand  one's  thought  so  as  to  com 
pass  the  essential  thought  of  the  en 
tire  race.  And  this  is  precisely  what 
the  man  of  broad  culture  accom 
plishes  ;  he  emancipates  himself  from 
130 


Liberation  through  Ideas. 

whatever  is  local,  provincial,  and  tem 
poral,  by  gaining  the  power  of  taking 
the  race  point  of  view.  He  is  liber 
ated  by  ideas,  not  only  from  his  own 
ignorance  and  the  limitations  of  his 
own  nature,  but  from  the  partial 
knowledge  and  the  prejudices  of  his 
time ;  and  liberation  by  ideas,  and 
expansion  through  ideas,  constitute 
one  of  the  great  services  of  the  books 
of  life  to  those  who  read  them  with 
an  open  mind. 


Chapter  XI. 

The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

HP  HE  ideas  which  form  the  sub 
stance  or  substratum  of  the 
greatest  books  are  not  primarily  the 
products  of  pure  thought ;  they  have 
a  far  deeper  origin,  and  their  immense 
power  of  enlightenment  and  enrich 
ment  lies  in  the  depth  of  their  rootage 
in  the  unconscious  life  of  the  race.  If 
it  be  true  that  the  fundamental  pro 
cess  of  the  physical  universe  and  of 
the  life  of  man,  so  far  as  we  can  under 
stand  them,  is  not  intellectual,  but 
vital,  then  it  is  also  true  that  the 
formative  ideas  by  which  we  live,  and 
in  the  clear  comprehension  of  which 
the  greatness  of  intellectual  and  spirit- 
132 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

ual  life  for  us  lies,  have  been  borne  in 
upon  the  race  by  living  rather  than 
by  thinking.  They  are  felt  and  ex 
perienced  first,  and  formulated  later. 
It  is  clear  that  a  definite  purpose  is 
being  wrought  out  through  phys 
ical  processes  in  the  world  of  matter ; 
it  is  equally  clear  to  most  men  that 
moral  and  spiritual  purposes  are  being 
worked  out  through  the  processes 
which  constitute  the  conditions  of 
our  being  and  acting  in  this  world. 
It  has  been  the  engrossing  and  fruit 
ful  study  of  science  to  discover  the 
processes  and  comprehend  the  ends 
of  the  physical  order ;  it  is  the  highest 
office  of  art  to  discover  and  illustrate, 
for  the  most  part  unconsciously,  the 
processes  and  results  of  the  spiritual 
order  by  setting  forth  in  concrete 
form  the  underlying  and  formative 
ideas  of  races  and  periods. 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

"  The  thought  that  makes  the  work 
of  art,"  says  Mr.  John  La  Farge  in  a 
discussion  of  the  art  of  painting  of 
singular  insight  and  intelligence,  "  the 
thought  which  in  its  highest  expres 
sion  we  call  genius,  is  not  reflection 
or  reflective  thought.  The  thought 
which  analyses  has  the  same  defi 
ciencies  as  our  eyes.  It  can  fix  only 
one  point  at  a  time.  It  is  necessary 
for  it  to  examine  each  element  of  con 
sideration,  and  unite  it  to  others,  to 
make  a  whole.  But  the  logic  of  free 
life,  which  is  the  logic  of  art,  is  like 
that  logic  of  one  using  the  eye,  in 
which  we  make  most  wonderful  com 
binations  of  momentary  adaptation,  by 
co-ordinating  innumerable  memories, 
by  rejecting  those  that  are  useless  or 
antagonistic;  and  all  without  being 
aware  of  it,  so  that  those  especially 
who  most  use  the  eye,  as,  for  instance, 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

the  painter  or  the  hunter,  are  una 
ware  of  more  than  one  single,  instan 
taneous  action."  This  is  a  very  happy 
formulation  of  a  fundamental  principle 
in  art ;  indeed,  it  brings  before  us  the 
essential  quality  of  art,  its  illustra 
tion  of  thought  in  the  order  not  of 
a  formal  logic,  but  of  the  logic  of  free 
life.  It  is  at  this  point  that  it  is 
differentiated  from  philosophy ;  it  is 
from  this  point  that  its  immense 
spiritual  significance  becomes  clear. 
In  the  great  books  fundamental  ideas 
are  set  forth  not  in  a  systematic  way, 
nor  as  the  results  of  methodical  teach 
ing,  but  as  they  rise  over  the  vast 
territory  of  actual  living,  and  are  clari 
fied  by  the  long-continued  and  many- 
sided  experience  of  the  race.  Every 
book  of  the  first  order  in  literature  of 
the  creative  kind  is  a  final  generalisa 
tion  from  a  vast  experience.  It  is,  to 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

use  Mr.  La  Farge's  phrase,  the  co 
ordination  of  innumerable  memories, 
—  memories  shared  by  an  innumera 
ble  company  of  persons,  and  becoming, 
at  length  and  after  long  clarification,  a 
kind  of  race  memory ;  and  this  mem 
ory  is  so  inclusive  and  tenacious  that 
it  holds  intact  the  long  and  varied 
play  of  soil,  sky,  scenery,  climate, 
faith,  myth,  suffering,  action,  historic 
process,  through  which  the  race  has 
passed  and  by  which  it  has  been 
largely  formed. 

The  ideas  which  underlie  the  great 
books  bring  with  them,  therefore, 
when  we  really  receive  them  into  our 
minds,  the  entire  background  of  the 
life  out  of  which  they  took  their  rise. 
We  are  not  only  permitted  to  refresh 
ourselves  at  the  inexhaustible  spring, 
but,  as  we  drink,  the  entire  sweep  of 
landscape,  to  the  remotest  mountains 
136 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

in  whose  heart  its  sources  are  hidden, 
encompasses  us  like  a  vast  living 
world.  It  is,  in  other  words,  the 
totality  of  things  which  great  art 
gives  us,  —  not  things  in  isolation 
and  detachment.  Mr.  La  Farge  will 
pardon  further  quotation ;  he  admi 
rably  states  this  great  truth  when  he 
says  that  "  in  a  work  of  art,  executed 
through  the  body,  and  appealing  to 
the  mind  through  the  senses,  the 
entire  make-up  of  its  creator  addresses 
the  entire  constitution  of  the  man  for 
whom  it  is  meant."  One  may  go 
further,  and  say  of  the  greatest  books 
that  the  whole  race  speaks  through 
them  to  the  whole  man  who  puts 
himself  in  a  receptive  mood  towards 
them.  This  totality  of  influences, 
conditions,  and  history  which  goes  to 
the  making  of  books  of  this  order  re 
ceives  dramatic  unity,  artistic  sequence, 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

and  integral  order  and  coherence  from 
the  personality  of  the  writer.  He 
gathers  into  himself  the  spiritual  re 
sults  of  the  experience  of  his  people 
or  his  age,  and  through  his  genius 
for  expression  the  vast  general  back 
ground  of  his  personal  life,  which,  as 
in  the  case  of  Homer,  for  instance, 
has  entirely  faded  from  view,  rises 
once  more  in  clear  vision  before  us. 
"In  any  museum,"  says  Mr.  La 
Farge,  "we  can  see  certain  great 
differences  in  things ;  which  are  so 
evident,  so  much  on  the  surface,  as 
almost  to  be  our  first  impressions. 
They  are  the  marks  of  the  places 
where  the  works  of  art  were  born. 
Climate  ;  intensity  of  heat  and  light ; 
the  nature  of  the  earth  ;  whether  there 
was  much  or  little  water  in  proportion 
to  land ;  plants,  animals,  surrounding 
beings,  have  helped  to  make  these 
138 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

differences,  as  well  as  manners,  laws, 
religions,  and  national  ideals.  If  you 
recall  the  more  general  physical  im 
pression  of  a  gallery  of  Flemish 
paintings  and  of  a  gallery  of  Italian 
masters,  you  will  have  carried  off  in 
yourself  two  distinct  impressions  re 
ceived  during  their  lives  by  the  men 
of  these  two  races.  The  fact  that  they 
used  their  eyes  more  or  less  is  only  a 
small  factor  in  this  enormous  aggre 
gation  of  influences  received  by  them 
and  transmitted  to  us." 

From  this  point  of  view  the  inex 
haustible  significance  of  a  great  work 
of  art  becomes  clear,  both  as  regards 
its  definite  revelation  of  racial  and 
individual  truth,  and  as  regards  its 
educational  or  culture  quality  and 
value.  Ideas  are  presented  not  in 
isolation  and  detachment,  but  in  their 
totality  of  origin  and  relationship ; 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

they  are  not  abstractions,  general 
propositions,  philosophical  generalisa 
tions  ;  they  are  living  truths  —  truths, 
that  is,  which  have  become  clear  by 
long  experience,  and  to  which  men 
stand,  or  have  stood,  in  personal  rela 
tions.  They  are  ideas,  in  other  words, 
which  stand  together,  not  in  the  order 
of  formal  logic,  but  of  the  "  logic  of 
free  life."  They  are  not  torn  out  of 
their  normal  relations ;  they  bring  all 
their  relationships  with  them.  We 
are  offered  a  plant  in  the  soil,  not  a 
flower  cut  from  its  stem.  Every  man 
is  rooted  to  the  soil,  touches  through 
his  senses  the  physical,  and  through 
his  mind  and  heart  the  spiritual,  order 
of  his  time ;  all  these  influences  are 
focussed  in  him,  and  according  to  his 
capacity  he  gathers  them  into  his 
experience,  formulates  and  expresses 
them.  The  greater  and  more  pro- 
140 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

ductive  the  man,  the  wider  his  contact 
with  and  absorption  of  the  life  of  his 
time.  For  the  artist  stands  nearest, 
not  farthest  from  his  contemporaries. 
He  is  not,  however,  a  mere  medium 
in  their  hands,  not  a  mere  secretary 
or  recorder  of  their  ideas  and  feelings. 
He  is  separated  from  them  in  the 
clearness  of  his  vision  of  the  signifi 
cance  of  their  activities,  the  ends 
towards  which  they  are  moving,  the 
ideas  which  they  are  working  out; 
but,  in  the  exact  degree  of  his  great 
ness,  he  is  one  with  them  in  sympa 
thy,  experience,  and  comprehension. 
They  live  for  him,  and  he  lives  with 
them ;  they  work  out  ideas  in  the 
logic  of  free  life,  and  he  clarifies,  inter 
prets,  and  illustrates  those  ideas. 
The  world  is  not  saved  by  the  rem 
nant,  as  Matthew  Arnold  held ;  it  is 
saved  through  the  remnant.  The 
141 


The  Logic  of  Free  Life. 

elect  of  the  race,  its  prophets,  teach 
ers,  artists,  —  and  every  great  artist  is 
also  a  prophet  and  teacher,  —  are  its 
leaders,  not  its  masters ;  its  interpre 
ters,  not  its  creators.  The  race  is 
dumb  without  its  artists ;  but  the 
artists  would  be  impossible  without 
the  sustaining  fellowship  of  the  race. 
In  the  making  of  the  "Iliad"  and 
the  "  Odyssey "  the  Greek  race  was 
in  full  partnership  with  Homer. 
The  ideas  which  form  the  summits  of 
human  achievement  are  sustained  by 
immense  masses  of  earth ;  the  higher 
they  rise  the  vaster  their  bases.  The 
richer  and  wider  the  race  life,  the 
freer  and  deeper  the  play  of  that  vital 
logic  which  produces  the  formative 
ideas. 


142 


Chapter  XII. 
The  Imagination. 

HP  HE  Lady  of  Shalott,  sitting  in 
her  tower,  looked  into  her  magic 
mirror  and  saw  the  whole  world  go  by, 
—  monk,  maiden,  priest,  knight,  lady, 
and  king.  In  the  mirror  of  the  im 
agination  not  only  the  world  of 
to-day  but  the  entire  movement  of 
human  life  moves  before  the  eye  as 
the  throngs  of  living  men  move  on 
the  streets.  For  the  imagination  is 
the  real  magician,  of  whose  marvels  all 
simulated  magic  is  but  a  clumsy  and 
mechanical  imitation.  It  is  the  real 
power,  of  which  all  material  powers 
are  very  inadequate  symbols.  Rarely 


The  Imagination. 

taken  into  account  by  teachers,  largely 
ignored  by  educational  systems  and 
philosophies,  it  is  the  divinest  of  all 
the  powers  which  men  are  able  to 
/  put  forth,  because  it  is  the  creative 
power.  It  uses  thought,  but,  in  a 

x/*~  way,  it  is  greater  than  thought,  be 
cause  it  builds  out  of  thought  that 

I/  which  thought  alone  is  powerless  to 
construct.  It  is,  indeed,  the  essential 
element  in  great  constructive  think 
ing  ;  for  while  we  may  have  thoughts 
untouched  by  the  imagination,  one 
cannot  think  along  high  constructive 
lines  without  its  constant  aid.  Iso 
lated  thoughts  come  unattended  by 
it,  but  the  thinking  which  issues  in 
organised  systems,  in  comprehensive 
interpretations  of  things  and  events, 
in  those  noble  generalisations  which 
have  the  splendour  of  the  discovery 
of  new  worlds  in  them,  in  those  con- 
144 


The  Imagination. 

crete  embodiments  of  idea  which  we 
call  works  of  art,  is  conditioned  on 
the  use  of  the  imagination.  Plato's 
Dialogues  were  fashioned  by  it  as 
truly  as  Homer's  poems ;  Hegel's 
philosophy  was  created  by  it  as  defi 
nitely  as  Shakespeare's  plays,  and 
Newton  and  Kepler  used  it  as  freely 
as  Dante  or  Rembrandt. 

Upon  the  use  of  this  supreme  fac 
ulty  we  depend  not  only  for  creative 
power,  but  for  education  in  the  high 
est  sense  of  the  word ;  for  culture  is 
the  highest  result  of  education,  and 
the  final  test  of  education  is  its  power 
to  produce  culture.  Goethe  was  in 
the  habit  of  saying  that  sympathy  is 
essential  to  all  true  criticism ;  for  no 
man  can  discern  the  heart  of  a  move 
ment,  of  a  work  of  art,  or  of  a  race 
who  does  not  put  himself  into  heart 

relations  with  that  which  he  is  trying 
10  145 


The  Imagination. 

to  understand.  We  never  really  pos 
sess  an  idea,  a  bit  of  knowledge,  or  a 
fact  of  experience  until  we  get  below 
the  mind  of  it  into  the  heart  of  it. 
,/  Now,  sympathy  in  this  sense  is  the 
imagination  touched  with  feeling;  it 
is  the  imagination  bringing  thought 
and  emotion  into  vital  relation.  In 
the  process  of  culture,  therefore,  the 
imagination  plays  a  great  part ;  for 

i  culture,  it  cannot  too  often  be  said,  is 

(3  m  ' 

knowledge,  observation,  and  experi 
ence  incorporate  into  personality  and 
become  part  of  the  very  nature  of  the 
individual.  The  man  of  culture  is 
^  pre-eminently  a  man  of  imagination ; 
lacking  this  quality,  he  may  become 
learned  by  force  of  industry,  or  a 
scholar  by  virtue  of  a  trained  intelli 
gence,  but  the  ripeness,  the  balance, 
the  peculiar  richness  of  fibre  which 
characterise  the  man  of  culture  will  be 
146 


The  Imagination. 

denied  him.  The  man  of  culture,  it 
is  true,  is  not  always  a  man  of  creative 
power ;  but  he  is  never  devoid  of  that 
kind  of  creative  quality  which  trans 
forms  everything  he  receives  into 
something  personal  and  individual. 
And  the  more  deeply  one  studies  the 
work  of  the  great  artists,  the  more 
distinctly  does  he  see  the  immense 
place  which  culture  in  the  vital,  as 
contrasted  with  the  academic,  sense 
held  in  their  lives,  and  the  great  part 
it  played  in  their  productive  activity. 
Dante,  Goethe,  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Lowell,  were  men  possessed  in  rare 
degree  of  culture  of  both  kinds  ;  but 
Shakespeare  and  Burns  were  equally 
men  of  culture.  They  shared  in  the 
possession  of  this  faculty  of  making 
all  they  saw  and  knew  a  part  of  them 
selves.  Between  culture  of  this  qual 
ity  and  the  creative  power  there  is 
147 


The  Imagination. 

something  more  than  complete  unity ; 
there  is  almost  identity,  for  they  seem 
to  be  two  forms  of  activity  of  the 
same  power  rather  than  distinct  facul 
ties.  Culture  enables  us  to  receive 
the  world  into  ourselves,  not  in 
the  reflection  of  a  magic  mirror, 
but  in  the  depths  of  a  living  soul ; 
to  receive  that  world  in  such  a  way 
that  we  possess  it ;  it  ceases  to  be 
outside  us  and  becomes  part  of  our 
very  nature.  The  creative  power  en 
ables  us  to  refashion  that  world  and 
to  put  it  forth  again  out  of  ourselves, 
as  it  was  originally  put  forth  out  of 
the  life  of  the  divine  artist.  The 
creative  process  is,  therefore,  a  double 
process,  and  culture  and  genius  stand 
in  indissoluble  union. 

The  development  of  the  imagina- 
\J'    tion,  upon  the  power  of  which  both 
v.  absorption  of  knowledge  and  creative 
148 


The  Imagination. 

capacity  depend,  is,  therefore,  a  mat 
ter  of  supreme  importance.  To  this 
necessity  educators  will  some  day  open 
their  eyes,  and  educational  systems 
will  some  day  conform ;  meantime,  it 
must  be  done  mainly  by  individual 
work.  Knowledge,  discipline,  and 
technical  training  of  the  best  sort  are 
accessible  on  every  hand ;  but  the  de 
velopment  of  the  faculty  which  unites 
all  these  in  the  highest  form  of  activ 
ity  must  be  secured  mainly  by  per 
sonal  effort.  The  richest  and  most 
accessible  material  for  this  highest 
education  is  furnished  by  art ;  and  the 
form  of  art  within  reach  of  every  civ 
ilised  man,  at  all  times,  in  all  places, 
is  the  book.  To  these  masterpieces, 
which  have  been  called  the  books  of 
life,  all  men  may  turn  with  the  assur 
ance  that  as  the  supreme  achievements 
of  the  imagination  they  have  the 
149 


The  Imagination. 

power  of  awakening,  stimulating,  and 
enriching  it  in  the  highest  degree. 
For  the  genuine  reader,  who  sees  in  a 
book  what  the  writer  has  put  there, 
repeats  in  a  way  the  process  through 
which  the  maker  of  the  book  passed. 
The  man  who  reads  the  "  Iliad  "  and 
the  "  Odyssey  "  with  his  heart  as  well 
as  his  intelligence  must  measurably 
enter  into  the  life  which  these  poems 
describe  and  interpret ;  he  must  iden 
tify  himself  for  the  time  with  the  race 
whose  soul  and  historic  character  are 
revealed  in  epic  form  as  in  a  great 
mirror;  he  must  see  life  from  the 
Greek  point  of  view,  and  feel  life  as 
the  Greek  felt  it.  He  must,  in  a 
word,  go  through  the  process  by 
which  the  poems  were  made,  as  well 
as  feel,  comprehend,  and  enjoy  their 
final  perfection.  In  like  manner  the 
open-hearted  and  open-minded  reader 
150 


The  Imagination. 

of  the  Book  of  Job  cannot  rest  con 
tent  with  that  noble  poem  in  the  form 
which  it  now  possesses ;  the  imagina 
tive  impulse  which  even  the  casual 
reading  of  the  poem  liberates  in  him 
sends  him  behind  the  finished  product 
to  the  life  of  which  it  was  the  immor 
tal  fruit ;  he  enters  into  the  groping 
thought  of  an  age  which  has  perished 
out  of  all  other  remembrance ;  he 
deals  with  a  problem  which  is  as  old 
as  man  from  the  standpoint  of  men 
who  have  left  no  other  record  of 
themselves.  In  proportion  to  the 
depth  of  his  feeling  and  the  vitality  of 
his  imagination  he  must  saturate  him 
self  with  the  rich  life  of  thought,  con 
viction,  and  emotion,  of  struggle  and 
aspiration,  out  of  which  the  greatest 
of  the  poems  of  nature  took  its  rise. 
He  must,  in  a  word,  receive  into  him 
self  the  living  material  upon  which 


The  Imagination. 

the  unknown  poet  worked.  In  such 
a  process  the  imagination  is  evoked 
in  full  and  free  play ;  it  insensibly  re 
constructs  a  life  gone  out  of  knowl 
edge  ;  selects,  harmonises,  unifies,  and 
in  a  measure  creates.  It  illuminates 
and  unifies  knowledge,  divines  the 
wide  relations  of  thought,  and  dis 
cerns  its  place  in  organic  connection 
with  the  world  which  gave  it  birth. 

The  material  upon  which  this  great 
power  is  nourished  is  specifically  fur 
nished  by  the  works  which  it  has 
created.  As  the  eye  is  trained  to 
discover  the  line  of  beauty  by  com 
panionship  with  the  works  in  which 
it  is  revealed  with  the  greatest  clear 
ness  and  power,  so  is  the  imagination 
developed  by  intimacy  with  the  books 
which  disclose  its  depth,  its  reality, 
and  its  method.  The  reader  of 
Shakespeare  cannot  follow  the  lead- 
152 


The  Imagination. 

ings  of  his  masterly  imagination  with 
out  feeling  a  liberation  of  his  own 
faculty  of  seeing  things  as  parts  of  a 
vast  order  of  life.  He  does  not  gain 
the  poet's  creative  power,  but  he  is 
enlarged  and  enriched  to  the  point 
where  his  own  imagination  plays 
directly  on  the  material  about  it; 
he  receives  it  into  himself,  and  in  the 
exact  measure  in  which  he  learns 
the  secret  of  absorbing  what  he  sees, 
feels,  and  knows,  becomes  master  and 
interpreter  of  the  world  of  his  time, 
and  restorer  of  the  world  of  other 
times  and  men.  For  the  imagina 
tion,  playing  upon  fact  and  experi 
ence,  divines  their  meaning  and  puts 
us  in  possession  of  the  truth  and  life 
that  are  in  them.  To  possess  this 
magical  power  is  to  live  the  whole  of 
life  and  to  enter  into  the  heritage  of 
history. 


Chapter  XIII. 
Breadth  of  Life. 

of  the  prime  characteristics  of 
the  man  of  culture  is  freedom 
from  provincialism,  complete  deliver 
ance  from  rigidity  of  temper,  narrow 
ness  of  interest,  uncertainty  of  taste, 
and  general  unripeness.     The  villager, 
or  pagan  in  the  old  sense,  is  always  a 
provincial ;  his  horizon  is  narrow,  his 
outlook  upon  the  world  restricted,  his 
knowledge  of  life  limited.     He  may 
know  a  few  things    thoroughly;    he 
cannot  know  them  in  true  relation  to 
one  another  or  to  the  larger  order  of 
which  they  are  part.     He  may  know 
a  few  persons  intimately;   he  cannot 


Breadth  of  Life. 

know  the  representative  persons  of 
his  time  or  of  his  race.  The  essence 
of  provincialism  is  the  substitution  of 
a  part  for  the  whole ;  the  acceptance 
of  the  local  experience,  knowledge, 
and  standards  as  possessing  the  au 
thority  of  the  universal  experience, 
knowledge,  and  standards.  The  local 
experience  is  entirely  true  in  its  own 
sphere ;  it  becomes  misleading  when 
it  is  accepted  as  the  experience  of  all 
time  and  all  men.  It  is  this  mistake 
which  breeds  that  narrowness  and  un 
certainty  of  taste  and  opinion  from 
which  culture  furnishes  the  only  es 
cape.  A  small  community,  isolated 
from  other  communities  by  the  acci 
dents  of  position,  often  comes  to 
believe  that  its  way  of  doing  things 
is  the  way  of  the  world  ;  a  small  body 
of  religious  people,  devoutly  attentive 
to  their  own  observances,  often  reach 


Breadth  of  Life. 

the  conclusion  that  these  observances 
are  the  practice  of  that  catholic  church 
which  includes  the  pious-minded  of 
all  creeds  and  rituals  ;  a  group  of  radi 
cal  reformers,  by  passionate  advocacy 
of  a  single  reform,  come  to  believe 
that  there  have  been  no  reformers 
before  them,  and  that  none  will  be 
needed  after  them ;  a  band  of  fresh 
and  audacious  young  practitioners  of 
any  of  the  arts,  by  dint  of  insistence 
upon  a  certain  manner,  rapidly  gene 
rate  the  conviction  that  art  has  no 
other  manner. 

Society  is  full  of  provincialism  in 
art,  politics,  religion,  and  economics  ; 
and  the  essence  of  this  provincialism  is 
always  the  same,  —  the  substitution  of 
a  part  for  the  whole.  Larger  knowl 
edge  of  the  world  and  of  history 
would  make  it  perfectly  clear  that 
there  has  always  been,  not  only  a 

156 


Breadth  of  Life. 

wide  latitude,  but  great  variation,  in 
ritual  and  worship ;  that  the  political 
story  of  all  the  progressive  nations 
has  been  one  long  agitation  for  re 
forms,  and  that  no  reform  can  ever  be 
final ;  that  reform  must  succeed  re 
form  until  the  end  of  time,  —  reforms 
being  in  their  nature  neither  more 
nor  less  than  those  readjustments  to 
new  conditions  which  are  involved 
in  all  social  development.  A  wider 
survey  of  experience  would  make  it 
clear  that  art  has  many  manners, 
and  that  no  manner  is  supreme  and 
none  final. 

A  long  experience  gives  a  man 
poise,  balance,  and  steadiness ;  he  has 
seen  many  things  come  and  go,  and 
he  is  neither  paralysed  by  depression 
when  society  goes  wrong,  nor  irra 
tionally  elated  when  it  goes  right. 
He  is  perfectly  aware  that  his  party 


Breadth  of  Life. 

is  only  a  means  to  an  end,  and  not  a 
piece  of  indestructible  and  infallible 
machinery ;  that  the  creed  he  accepts 
has  passed  through  many  changes  of 
interpretation,  and  will  pass  through 
more ;  that  the  social  order  for  which 
he  contends,  if  secured,  will  be  only 
another  stage  in  the  unbroken  devel 
opment  of  the  organised  life  of  men 
in  the  world.  And  culture  is,  at 
bottom,  only  an  enlarged  and  clarified 
experience,  —  an  experience  so  com 
prehensive  that  it  puts  its  possessor 
in  touch  with  all  times  and  men,  and 
gives  him  the  opportunity  of  com 
paring  his  own  knowledge  of  things, 
his  faith  and  his  practice,  with  the 
knowledge,  faith,  and  practice  of  all 
the  generations.  This  opportunity 
brings,  to  one  who  knows  how  to 
use  it,  deliverance  from  the  igno 
rance  or  half-knowledge  of  provincial- 
158 


Breadth  of  Life. 

ism,  from  the  crudity  of  its  half-trained 
tastes,  and  from  the  blind  passion  of 
its  rash  and  groundless  faith  in  its 
own  infallibility. 

Provincialism  is  the  soil  in  which 
philistinism  grows  most  rapidly  and 
widely.  For  as  the  essence  of  pro 
vincialism  is  the  substitution  of  a  part 
for  the  whole,  so  the  essence  of  phi 
listinism  is  the  conviction  that  what 
one  possesses  is  the  best  of  its  kind, 
that  the  kind  is  the  highest,  and  that 
one  has  all  he  needs  of  it.  A  true 
philistine  is  not  only  convinced  that 
he  holds  the  only  true  and  consistent 
position,  but  he  is  also  entirely  satis 
fied  with  himself.  He  is  infallible 
and  he  is  sufficient  unto  himself.  In 
politics  he  is  a  blind  partisan,  in  the 
ology  an  arrogant  dogmatist,  in  art  an 
ignorant  propagandist.  What  he  ac 
cepts,  believes,  or  has,  is  not  only  the 


Breadth  of  Life. 

best  of  its  kind,  but  nothing  better 
can  ever  supersede  it. 

To  this  spirit  the  spirit  of  culture 
is  antipodal ;  between  the  two  there  is 
inextinguishable  antagonism.  They 
can  never  compromise  or  agree  upon 
a  truce,  any  more  than  day  and  night 
can  consent  to  dwell  together.  To 
destroy  philistinism  root  and  branch, 
to  eradicate  the  ignorance  which  makes 
it  possible  for  a  man  to  believe  that 
he  possesses  all  things  in  their  final 
forms,  to  empty  a  man  of  the  stupid 
ity  and  vulgarity  of  self-satisfaction, 
and  to  invigorate  the  immortal  dis 
satisfaction  of  the  soul  with  its  present 
attainments,  are  the  ends  which  culture 
is  always  seeking  to  accomplish.  The 
keen  lance  of  Matthew  Arnold,  flash 
ing  now  in  one  part  of  the  field  and 
now  in  another,  pierced  many  of  the 
fallacies  of  provincialism  and  philistin- 
160 


Breadth  of  Life. 

ism,  and  mortally  wounded  more  than 
one  Goliath  of  ignorance  and  conceit ; 
but  the  work  must  be  done  anew  in 
every  generation  and  in  every  individ 
ual.  All  men  are  conceived  in  the 
sin  of  ignorance  and  born  in  the  ini 
quity  of  half-knowledge ;  and  every 
man  needs  to  be  saved  by  wider 
knowledge  and  clearer  vision.  It  is 
a  matter  of  comparative  indifference 
where  one  is  born ;  it  is  a  matter  of 
supreme  importance  how  one  educates 
one's  self.  There  is  as  genuine  a 
provincialism  in  Paris  as  in  the  re 
motest  frontier  town ;  it  is  better 
dressed  and  better  mannered,  but  it 
is  not  less  narrow  and  vulgar.  There 
is  as  much  vulgarity  in  the  arrogance 
of  a  czar  as  in  that  of  an  African 
chief;  as  much  absurdity  in  the  self- 
satisfaction  of  the  man  who  believes 
that  the  habit  and  speech  of  the  boule- 
"  161 


Breadth  of  Life. 

vard  are  the  ultimate  habit  and  speech 
of  the  race,  as  in  that  of  the  man  who 
accepts  the  manners  of  the  mining 
camp  as  the  finalities  of  human  inter 
course.  Culture  is  not  an  accident 
of  birth,  although  surroundings  re 
tard  or  advance  it;  it  is  always  a 
matter  of  individual  education. 

This  education  finds  no  richer  ma 
terial  than  that  which  is  contained  in 
literature ;  for  the  characteristic  of  lit 
erature,  as  of  all  the  arts,  is  its  uni 
versality  of  interest,  its  elevation  of 
taste,  its  disclosure  of  ideas,  its  con 
stant  appeal  to  the  highest  in  the 
reader  by  its  revelation  of  the  highest 
in  the  writer.  Many  of  the  noblest 
works  of  literature  are  intensely  local 
in  colour,  atmosphere,  material,  and 
allusion ;  but  in  every  case  that  which 
is  of  universal  interest  is  touched, 
evoked,  and  expressed.  The  artist 
162 


Breadth  of  Life. 

makes  the  figure  he  paints  stand  out 
with  the  greatest  distinctness  by  the 
accuracy  of  the  details  introduced 
and  by  the  skill  with  which  they  are 
handled ;  but  the  very  definiteness  of 
the  figure  gives  force  and  clearness  to 
the  revelation  of  the  universal  trait  or 
characteristic  which  is  made  through 
it.  Pere  Goriot  has  the  ineffaceable 
stamp  of  Paris  upon  him,  but  he  is  for 
that  very  reason  the  more  completely 
disclosed  as  a  typical  individuality. 
Literature  abounds  in  illustrations  of 
this  true  and  artistic  adjustment  of 
the  local  to  the  universal,  this  dis 
closure  of  the  common  humanity  in 
which  all  men  share  through  the 
highly  elaborated  individuality;  and 
this  characteristic  indicates  one  of 
the  deepest  sources  of  its  educational 
power.  So  searching  is  this  power 
that  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  one  can 


Breadth  of  Life. 

know  thoroughly  the  great  books  of 
the  world  and  remain  a  provincial  or 
a  philistine ;  the  very  air  of  these 
works  is  fatal  to  narrow  views,  to  low 
standards,  and  to  self-satisfaction. 


164 


Chapter  XIV. 
Racial  Experience. 

TT'HERE  is  a  general  agreement 
among  men  that  experience  is 
the  most  effective  and  successful  of 
teachers  ;  that  for  many  men  no  other 
form  of  education  is  possible ;  and 
that  those  who  enjoy  the  fullest  edu 
cational  opportunities  miss  the  deeper 
processes  of  training  if  they  fail  of 
that  wide  contact  with  the  happenings 
of  life  which  we  call  experience.  To 
touch  the  world  at  many  points ;  to 
come  into  relations  with  many  kinds 
of  men ;  to  think,  to  feel,  and  to  act 
on  a  generous  scale,  —  these  are  prime 
opportunities  for  growth.  For  it  is 

165 


Racial  Experience. 

not  only  true,  as  Browning  said  so 
often  and  in  so  many  kinds  of  speech, 
that  a  man's  greatest  good  fortune  is 
to  have  the  opportunity  of  giving  out 
freely  and  powerfully  all  the  force  that 
is  in  him,  but  it  is  also  true  that  al 
most  equal  good  fortune  attends  the 
man  who  has  the  opportunity  of  re 
ceiving  truth  and  instruction  through 
a  wide  and  rich  experience. 

But  individual  experience,  however 
inclusive  and  deep,  is  necessarily  lim 
ited,  and  the  life  of  the  greatest  man 
would  be  confined  within  narrow 
boundaries  if  he  were  shut  within  the 
circle  of  his  own  individual  contact 
with  things  and  persons.  If  Shake 
speare  had  written  of  those  things  only 
of  which  he  had  personal  knowledge, 
of  those  experiences  in  which  he  had 
personally  shared,  his  contribution  to 
literature  would  be  deeply  interesting, 
166 


Racial  Experience. 

but  it  would  not  possess  that  quality 
of  universality  which  makes  it  the 
property  of  the  race.  In  Shakespeare 
there  was  not  only  knowledge  of  man, 
but  knowledge  of  men  as  well.  His 
greatness  rests  not  only  on  his  own 
commanding  personality,  but  on  his 
magical  power  of  laying  other  person 
alities  under  tribute  for  the  enlarge 
ment  of  his  view  of  things  and  the 
enrichment  of  his  portraiture  of  hu 
manity.  A  man  learns  much  from 
his  own  contacts  with  his  time  and  his 
race,  but  one  of  the  most  important 
gains  he  makes  is  the  development  of 
the  faculty  of  appropriating  the  re 
sults  of  the  contacts  of  other  men  with 
other  times  and  races  ;  and  one  of  the 
finer  qualities  of  rich  experience  is 
the  quickening  of  the  imagination  to 
divine  that  which  is  hidden  in  the 
experience  of  other  races  and  ages. 
167 


Racial  Experience. 

The  man  of  culture  must  not  only 
live  deeply  and  intelligently  in  his 
own  experience,  rationalising  and  uti 
lising  it  as  he  passes  through  it;  he 
must  also  break  away  from  its  lim 
itations  and  escape  its  tendency  to 
substitute  a  part  of  life,  distinctly 
seen,  for  the  whole  of  life,  vaguely 
discerned.  The  great  writer,  for  in 
stance,  must  first  make  his  own  nature 
rich  in  its  development  and  powerful 
in  harmony  of  aim  and  force,  and  he 
must  also  make  this  nature  sensitive, 
sympathetic,  and  clairvoyant  in  its  re 
lations  with  the  natures  of  other  men. 
To  become  self-centred,  and  yet  to 
be  able  to  pass  entirely  out  of  one's 
self  into  the  thoughts,  emotions,  im 
pulses,  and  sufferings  of  others,  in 
volves  a  harmonising  of  opposing 
tendencies  which  is  difficult  of  attain 
ment. 

168 


Racial  Experience. 

It  is  precisely  this  poise  which  men 
of  the  highest  productive  power  se 
cure  ;  for  it  is  this  nice  adjustment  of 
the  individual  discovery  of  truth  to 
the  general  discovery  of  truth  which 
gives  a  man  of  imaginative  faculty 
range,  power,  and  sanity  of  view. 
To  see,  feel,  think,  and  act  strongly 
and  intelligently  in  our  own  individ 
ual  world  gives  us  first-hand  relations 
to  that  world,  and  first-hand  knowl 
edge  of  it ;  to  pass  beyond  the  limits 
of  this  small  sphere,  which  we  touch 
with  our  own  hands,  into  the  larger 
spheres  which  other  men  touch,  not 
only  widens  our  knowledge  but  vastly 
increases  our  power.  It  is  like  ex 
changing  the  power  of  a  small  stream 
for  the  general  power  which  plays 
through  Nature.  One  of  the  meas 
ures  of  greatness  is  furnished  by  this 
ability  to  pass  through  individual  into 
169 


Racial   Experience. 

national  or  racial  experience ;  for  a 
man's  spiritual  dimensions,  as  revealed 
through  any  form  of  art,  are  deter 
mined  by  his  power  of  discerning 
essential  qualities  and  experiences  in 
the  greatest  number  of  people.  The 
four  writers  who  hold  the  highest 
places  in  literature  justify  their  claims 
by  their  universality;  that  is  to  say, 
by  the  range  of  their  knowledge  of 
life  as  that  knowledge  lies  revealed  in 
the  experience  of  the  race. 

It  is  the  fortune  of  a  very  small 
group  of  men  in  any  age  to  possess 
the  power  of  divining,  by  the  gift  of 
genius,  the  world  which  lies,  nebulous 
and  shadowy,  in  the  lives  of  men 
about  them,  or  in  the  lives  of  men 
of  other  times ;  in  the  nature  of 
things,  the  clairvoyant  vision  of  poets 
like  Tennyson,  Browning,  and  Hugo, 
of  novelists  like  Thackeray,  Balzac, 
170 


Racial  Experience. 

and  Tolstoi,  is  not  at  the  command 
of  all  men ;  and  yet  all  men  may 
share  in  it  and  be  enlarged  by  it. 
This  is  one  of  the  most  important 
services  which  literature  renders  to  its 
lover :  it  makes  him  a  companion  of 
the  most  interesting  personalities  in 
their  most  significant  moments ;  it 
enables  him  to  break  the  bars  of  in 
dividual  experience  and  escape  into 
the  wider  and  richer  life  of  the  race. 
Within  the  compass  of  a  very  small 
room,  on  a  very  few  shelves,  the  real 
story  of  man  in  this  world  may  be 
collected  in  the  books  of  life  in  which 
it  is  written ;  and  the  solitary  reader, 
whose  personal  contacts  with  men  and 
events  are  few  and  lacking  in  distinc 
tion  and  interest,  may  enter,  through 
his  books,  into  the  most  thrilling  life 
of  the  race  in  some  of  its  most  signifi 
cant  moments. 

171 


Racial  Experience. 

No  man  can  read  "In  Memoriam  " 
or  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book  "  with 
out  passing  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
his  individual  experience  into  experi 
ences  which  broaden  and  quicken  his 
own  spirit ;  and  no  one  can  become 
familiar  with  the  novels  of  Tourgue*- 
neff  or  Tolstoi  without  touching  life 
at  new  points  and  passing  through 
emotions  which  would  never  have 
been  stirred  in  him  by  the  happen 
ings  of*  his  own  life.  Such  a  story  as 
"Anna  Karenina"  leaves  no  reader 
of  imagination  or  heart  entirely  un 
changed  ;  its  elemental  moral  and 
artistic  force  strikes  into  every  recep 
tive  mind  and  leaves  there  a  knowl 
edge  of  life  not  possessed  before.  The 
work  of  the  Russian  novelists  has 
been,  indeed,  a  new  reading  in  the 
book  of  experience ;  it  has  made  a 
notable  addition  to  the  sum  total  of 
172 


Racial  Experience. 

humanity's  knowledge  of  itself.  In 
the  pages  of  Gogol,  Dostoievski, 
Tourgueneff,  and  Tolstoi,  the  major 
ity  of  readers  have  found  a  world  ab 
solutely  new  to  them ;  and  in  reading 
those  pages,  so  penetrated  with  the 
dramatic  spirit,  they  have  come  into 
the  possession  of  a  knowledge  of  life 
not  formal  and  didactic,  but  deep, 
vital,  and  racial  in  its  range  and  sig 
nificance.  To  possess  the  knowledge 
of  an  experience  at  once  so  remote 
and  so  rich  in  disclosure  of  character, 
so  charged  with  tragic  interest,  is  to 
push  back  the  horizons  of  our  own 
experience,  to  secure  a  real  contri 
bution  to  our  own  enrichment  and 
development.  Whoever  carries  that 
process  far  enough  brings  into  his  in 
dividual  experience  much  of  the  rich 
ness  and  splendour  of  the  experience 
of  the  race. 


Chapter  XV. 

•s 

Freshness  of  Feeling. 

primary  charm  of  art  resides 
in  the  freshness  of  feeling  which 
it  reveals  and  conveys.  An  art  which 
discloses  fatigue,  weariness,  exhaustion 
of  emotion,  deadening  of  interest,  has 
parted  with  its  magical  spell ;  for  vital 
ity,  emotion,  passionate  interest  in  the 
experiences  of  life,  devout  acceptance 
of  the  facts  of  life,  are  the  prime  char 
acteristics  of  art  in  those  moments 
when  its  veracity  and  power  are  at  the 
highest  point.  A  great  work  of  art 
,  /  may  be  tragic  in  the  view  of  life  which 
it  presents,  but  it  must  show  no  sign 
of  the  succumbing  of  the  spirit  to  the 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

appalling  facts  with  which  it  deals ; 
even  in  those  cases  in  which,  as  in 
the  tragedy  of  "  King  Lear,"  blind 
fate  seems  relentlessly  sovereign  over 
human  affairs,  the  artist  must  disclose 
in  his  attitude  and  method  a  sustained 
energy  of  spirit.  Nothing  shows  so 
clearly  a  decline  in  creative  force  as 
a  loss  of  interest  on  the  part  of  the 
artist  in  the  subject  or  material  with 
which  he  deals. 

That  fresh  bloom  which  lies  on  the 
very  face  of  poetry,  and  in  which  not 
only  its  obvious  but  its  enduring  charm 
resides,  is  the  expression  of  a  feeling 
for  nature,  for  life,  and  for  the  happen 
ings  which  make  up  the  common  lot, 
which  keeps  its  earliest  receptivity  and 
responsiveness.  When  a  man  ceases 
to  care  deeply  for  things,  he  ceases  to^~~ 
represent  or  interpret  them  with  in 
sight  and  power.  The  preservation 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

v  of  feeling  is,  therefore,  essential  in  all 
artistic  work ;  and  when  it  is  lost,  the 
artist  becomes  an  echo  or  an  imitation 
of  his  nobler  self  and  work.  It  is 
the  beautiful  quality  of  the  true  art 
instinct  that  it  constantly  sees  and 
feels  the  familiar  world  with  a  kind  of 
childlike  directness  and  delight.  That 
which  has  become  commonplace  to 
most  men  is  as  full  of  charm  and 
novelty  to  the  artist  as  if  it  had  just 
been  created.  He  sees  it  with  fresh 
eyes  and  feels  it  with  a  fresh  heart. 
To  such  a  spirit  nothing  becomes 
stale  and  hackneyed ;  everything  re 
mains  new,  fresh,  and  significant.  It 
has  often  been  said  that  if  it  were  not 

v-  for  the  children  the  world  would  lose 
the  faith,  the  enthusiasm,  the  delight 
which  constantly  renew  its  spirit  and 
reinforce  its  courage.  A  world  grown 
old  in  feeling  would  be  an  exhausted 
176 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

world,  incapable  of  production  along 
spiritual  or  artistic  lines.  Now,  the 
artist  is  always  a  child  in  the  eager 
ness  of  his  spirit  and  the  freshness  of 
his  feeling  ;  he  retains  the  magical 
power  of  seeing  things  habitually,  and 
still  seeing  them  freshly.  Mr.  Lowell 
was  walking  with  a  friend  along  a 
country  road  when  they  came  upon  a 
large  building  which  bore  the  inscrip 
tion,  "  Home  for  Incurable  Children." 
"  They  '11  take  me  there  some  day," 
was  the  half-humorous  comment  of  a 
sensitive  man,  to  whom  life  brought 
great  sorrows,  but  who  retained  to  the 
very  end  a  youthful  buoyancy,  cour 
age,  and  faculty  of  finding  delight  in  & 
common  things. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  great 
est  men  and  women  never  lose  the 
qualities  which  are  commonly  associ 
ated  with  youth,  —  freshness  of  feeling,  L 


12 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

zest  for  work,  joy  in  life.  Goethe  at 
eighty-four  studied  the  problems  of 
life  with  the  same  deep  interest  which 
he  had  felt  in  them  at  thirty  or  forty ; 
Tennyson's  imagination  showed  some 
signs  of  waning  power  in  extreme  old 
age,  but  the  magic  of  feeling  was  still 
fresh  in  his  heart;  Dr.  Holmes  car 
ried  his  blithe  spirit,  his  gayety  and 
spontaneity  of  wit,  to  the  last  year  of 
his  life ;  and  Mr.  Gladstone  at  eighty- 
six  is  one  of  the  most  eager  and 
aspiring  men  of  his  time.  Genius 
seems  to  be  allied  to  immortal  youth; 
and  in  this  alliance  resides  a  large  part 
of  its  power.  For  the  man  of  genius 
does  not  demonstrate  his  possession 
of  that  rare  and  elusive  gift  by  seeing 
things  which  have  never  been  seen 
before,  but  by  seeing  with  fresh  inter 
est  what  men  have  seen  so  often  that 
they  have  ceased  to  regard  it.  Nov- 
178 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

elty  is  rarely  characteristic  of  great 
works  of  art;  on  the  contrary,  the 
facts  of  life  which  they  set  before  us 
are  familiar,  and  the  thoughts  they 
convey  by  direct  statement  or  by  dra 
matic  illustration  have  always  been 
haunting  our  minds.  The  secret  of 
the  artist  resides  in  the  unwearied  vi 
tality  which  brings  him  to  such  close 
quarters  with  life,  and  endows  him 
with  directness  of  sight  and  freshness 
of  feeling.  Daisies  have  starred  fields 
in  Scotland  since  men  began  to  plough 
and  reap,  but  Burns  saw  them  as  if 
they  had  sprung  from  the  ground  for 
the  first  time ;  forgotten  generations 
have  seen  the  lark  rise  and  heard  the 
cuckoo  call  in  England,  but  to  Words 
worth  the  song  from  the  upper  sky 
and  the  notes  from  the  thicket  on  the 
hill  were  full  of  the  music  of  the  first 
morning.  Shakespeare  dealt  with  old 
179 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

stories  and  constantly  touched  upon 
the  most  familiar  things  ;  but  with 
what  new  interest  he  invests  both 
theme  and  illustration !  One  may 
spend  a  lifetime  in  a  country  village, 
surrounded  by  people  who  are  appar 
ently  entirely  uninteresting ;  but  if 
one  has  the  eye  of  a  novelist  for  the 
facts  of  life,  the  power  to  divine  char 
acter,  the  gift  to  catch  the  turn  of 
speech,  the  trick  of  voice,  the  pecu 
liarity  of  manner,  what  resources,  dis 
coveries,  and  diversion  are  at  hand ! 
The  artist  never  has  to  search  for 
material ;  it  is  always  at  hand.  That 
it  is  old,  trite,  stale  to  others,  is  of  no 
consequence ;  it  is  always  fresh  and 
significant  to  him. 

This  freshness  of  feeling  is  not  in 

any  way  dependent  on  the  character 

of  the  materials  upon  which  it  plays  ; 

it   is    not   an    irresponsible   tempera- 

180 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

mental  quality  which  seeks  the  joyful 
or  comic  facts  of  life  and  ignores  its 
sad  and  tragic  aspects.  The  zest  of 
spirit  which  one  finds  in  Shakespeare, 
for  instance,  is  not  a  blind  optimism 
thoughtlessly  escaping  from  the  shad 
ows  into  the  sunshine.  On  the  con 
trary,  it  is  drawn  by  a  deep  instinct  to 
study  the  most  perplexing  problems 
of  character,  and  to  drop  its  plummets 
into  the  blackest  abysses  of  experi 
ence.  Literature  deals  habitually  with 
the  most  sombre  side  of  the  human 
lot,  and  finds  its  richest  material  in 
those  awful  happenings  which  invest 
the  history  of  every  race  with  such 
pathetic  interest;  jind  yet  literature, 
in  its  great  moments,  overflows  with 
vitality,  zest  of  spirit,  freshness  of 
spirit !  There  is  no  contradiction  in 
all  this^  for  the  vitality  which  per 
vades  great  art  is  not  dependent  upon 
181 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

external  conditions ;  it  has  its  source 
in  the  soul  of  the  artist.  It  is  the 
immortal  quality  in  the  human  spirit 
playing  like  sunshine  on  the  hardest 
and  most  tragic  facts  of  experience. 
It  often  suggests  no  explanation  of 
these  facts ;  it  is  content  to  present 
them  with  relentless  veracity;  but 
even  when  it  offers  no  solution  of  the 
tragic  problem,  the  tireless  interest 
which  it  feels,  the  force  with  which  it 
illustrates  and  describes,  the  power  of 
moral  organisation  and  interpretation 
which  it  reveals,  carry  with  them  the 
conviction  that  the  spirit  of  man,  how 
ever  baffled  and  beaten,  is  superior  to 
all  the  accidents  of  fortune,  and  inde 
structible  even  within  the  circle  of  the 
blackest  fate.  As  CEdipus,  old,  blind, 
and  smitten,  vanishes  from  our  sight, 
we  think  of  him  no  longer  as  a  great 
figure  blasted  by  adverse  fate,  but  as  a 
182 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

great  soul  smitten  and  scourged,  and 
yet  still  invested  with  the  dignity  of 
immortality.  The  dramatist,  even 
when  he  throws  no  light  on  the  ulti 
mate  solution  of  the  problem  with 
which  he  is  dealing,  feels  so  deeply 
and  freshly,  and  discloses  such  sus 
tained  strength,  that  the  vitality  with 
which  the  facts  are  exhibited  and  the 
question  stated  affirms  its  superiority 
over  all  the  adversities  and  catas 
trophes  of  fortune. 

This  freshness  of  feeling,  which  is 
the  gift  of  men  and  women  of  genius,  ^ 
must  be  possessed  in  some  measure 
by  all  who  long  to  get  the  most  out 
of  life  and  to  develop  their  own  inner 
resources.  To  retain  zest  in  work 
and  delight  in  life  we  must  keep  fresh-  /^2_ 
ness  of  feeling.  Its  presence  lends 
unfailing  charm  to  its  possessor ;  its 
loss  involves  loss  of  the  deepest  per- 
183 


Freshness  of  Feeling. 

sonal  charm.  It  is  essential  in  all 
genuine  culture,  because  it  sustains  1 
that  interest  in  events,  experience, 
and  opportunity  upon  which  growth 
is  largely  conditioned;  and  there  is 
no  more  effective  means  of  preserving 
and  developing  it  than  intimacy  with 
those  who  have  invested  all  life  with 
its  charm.  The  great  books  are  res 
ervoirs  of  this  vitality.  When  our 
own  interest  begins  to  die  and  the 
world  turns  gray  and  old  in  our  sight, 
we  have  only  to  open  Homer,  Shake 
speare,  Browning,  and  the  flowers 
bloom  again  and  the  skies  are  blue ; 
and  the  experiences  of  life,  however 
tragic,  are  matched  by  a  vitality  which 
is  sovereign  over  them  all. 


184 


Chapter  XVI. 
Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

TPHE  law  of  opposites  under  which 
men  live  is  very  strikingly 
brought  out  in  the  endeavour  to  se 
cure  a  sound  and  intelligent  adjust 
ment  to  one's  time,  —  a  relation 
intimate  and  vital,  and  at  the  same 
time  deliberately  and  judicially  as 
sumed.  To  be  detached  in  thought, 
feeling,  or  action,  from  the  age  in 
which  one  lives,  is  to  cut  the  ties  that 
bind  the  individual  to  society,  and 
through  which  he  is  very  largely 
nourished  and  educated.  To  live 
deeply  and  really  through  every 
form  of  expression  and  in  every 
185 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

relationship  is  so  essential  to  the 
complete  unfolding  of  the  person 
ality  that  he  who  falls  below  the  full 
measure  of  his  capacity  for  experi 
ence  and  for  expression  falls  below 
the  full  measure  of  his  possible 
growth.  Life  is  not,  as  some  men 
of  detached  moods  or  purely  critical 
temper  have  assumed,  a  spectacle 
of  which  the  secret  can  be  mastered 
without  sharing  in  the  movement ; 
it  is  rather  a  drama,  the  splendour 
of  whose  expression  and  the  depth 
of  whose  meaning  are  revealed  to 
those  alone  who  share  in  the  action. 
To  stand  aside  from  the  vital  move 
ment  and  study  life  in  a  purely 
critical  spirit  is  to  miss  the  deeper 
education  which  is  involved  in  the 
vital  process,  and  to  lose  the  funda 
mental  revelation  which  is  slowly 
and  painfully  disclosed  to  those 
186 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

whose  minds  and  hearts  are  open 
to  receive  it.  No  one  can  under 
stand  love  who  has  not  loved  and 
been  loved ;  no  one  can  compre 
hend  sorrow  who  has  not  had  the 
companionship  of  sorrow.  The  ex 
periment  has  been  made  in  many 
forms,  but  no  one  has  yet  been 
nourished  by  the  fruit  of  the  tree 
of  knowledge  who  has  eaten  of  that 
fruit  alone.  In  the  art  of  living, 
as  in  all  the  arts  which  illustrate 
and  enrich  living,  the  amateur  and 
the  dilettante  have  no  real  position ; 
they  never  attain  to  that  mastery 
of  knowledge  or  of  execution  which 
alone  give  reality  to  a  man's  life  or 
work.  Mastery  in  any  art  comes 
to  those  only  who  give  themselves 
without  reservation  or  stint  to  their 
task ;  mastery  in  the  supreme  art  of 
living  is  within  reach  of  those  only 
187 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

who  live  completely  in  every  faculty 
and  relation. 

To  stand  in  the  closest  and  most 
vital  relation  to  one's  time  is,  there 
fore,  the  first  condition  of  compre 
hending  one's  age  and  getting  from  it 
what  it  has  to  give.  But  while  a  man 
must  be  in  and  with  his  time  in  the 
most  vital  sense,  he  must  not  be 
wholly  of  it.  To  get  the  vital  en 
richment  which  flows  from  identifica 
tion  with  one's  age,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  get  the  detachment  which  en 
ables  one  to  see  his  time  in  true  rela 
tion  to  all  time,  is  one  of  the  problems 
which  requires  the  highest  wisdom 
for  its  solution.  It  is  easy  to  become 
entirely  absorbed  in  one's  age,  or  it  is 
easy  to  detach  one's  self  from  it,  and 
study  it  in  a  cold  and  critical  temper ; 
but  to  get  its  warmth  and  vitality  and 
escape  its  narrowing  and  limiting  in- 
188 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

fluence  is  so  difficult  that  compara 
tively  few  men  succeed  in  striking  the 
balance  between  two  divergent  tend 
encies. 

A  man  gets  power  and  knowledge 
from  his  time  in  the  degree  in  which 
he  suffers  it  to  enlarge  and  vitalise 
him ;  he  loses  power  and  knowledge 
in  the  degree  in  which  he  suffers  it  to 
limit  his  vision  and  confine  his  inter 
ests.  The  Time  Spirit  is  the  greatest 
of  our  teachers  so  long  as  it  is  the  in 
terpreter  of  the  Eternal  Spirit ;  it  is 
the  most  fallible  and  misleading  of 
teachers  when  it  attempts  to  speak 
for  itself.  The  visible  and  material 
things  by  which  we  are  surrounded 
are  of  immense  helpfulness  so  long  as 
they  symbolise  invisible  and  spiritual 
things ;  they  become  stones  of  stum 
bling  and  rocks  of  offence  when  they 
are  detached  from  the  spiritual  order 
189 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

and  set  apart  in  an  order  of  their  own. 
The  age  in  which  we  live  affords  a 
concrete  illustration  of  the  vital  pro 
cesses  in  society  and  means  of  contact 
with  that  society,  but  it  is  comprehen 
sible  and  educative  in  the  exact  degree 
in  which  we  understand  its  relation  to 
other  times.  The  impression  which 
the  day  makes  upon  us  needs  to  be 
tested  by  the  impression  which  we  re 
ceive  from  the  year ;  the  judgment  of 
a  decade  must  be  corrected  by  the 
judgment  of  the  century.  The  pres 
ent  hour  is  subtly  illusive ;  it  fills  the 
whole  stage,  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
past  and  the  present;  it  appears  to 
stand  alone,  detached  from  all  that 
went  before  or  is  to  follow ;  it  seems 
to  be  the  historic  moment,  the  one 
reality  amid  fleeting  shadows.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  a  logical  product 
of  the  past,  bound  to  it  by  ties  so  elu- 
190 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

sive  that  we  cannot  trace  them,  and 
so  numerous  and  tenacious  that  we 
cannot  sever  them ;  it  is  but  a  frag 
ment  of  a  whole  immeasurably  greater 
than  itself;  its  character  is  so  com 
pletely  determined  by  the  past  that 
the  most  radical  changes  we  can  make 
in  it  are  essentially  superficial ;  for  it 
is  the  future,  not  the  present,  which 
is  in  our  hands.  To  get  even  a 
glimpse  of  the  character  and  meaning 
of  our  own  time,  we  must,  therefore, 
see  it  in  relation  to  all  time ;  to  mas 
ter  it  in  any  sense  we  must  set  it  in  its 
true  historical  relations.  That  which 
to  the  uneducated  mind  seems  porten 
tous  is  lightly  regarded  by  the  mind 
which  sees  the  apparently  isolated 
event  in  a  true  historic  perspective ; 
while  the  occurrence  or  condition 
which  is  barely  noticed  by  the  un 
trained,  seen  in  the  same  perspective, 
191 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

becomes  tragic  in  its  prophecy  of 
change  and  suffering.  History  is  full 
of  corrections  of  the  mistaken  judg 
ments  of  the  hour ;  and  from  the  hate 
or  adoration  of  contemporaries,  the 
wise  man  turns  to  the  clear-sighted 
and  inexorable  judgment  of  posterity. 
In  the  far-seeing  vision  of  a  trained 
intelligence  the  hour  is  never  detached 
from  the  day,  nor  the  day  from  the 
year;  and  the  year  is  always  held  in 
its  place  in  the  century. 

Now,  the  man  of  culture  has  pre 
eminently  the  gift  of  living  deeply  in 
his  own  age,  and  at  the  same  time  of 
seeing  it  in  relation  to  all  ages.  It 
has  no  illusion  for  him ;  it  cannot  de 
ceive  him  with  its  passionate  accept 
ance  or  its  equally  passionate  rejection. 
He  sees  the  crown  shining  above  the 
cross ;  he  hears  the  long  thunders  of 
applause  breaking  in  upon  execrations 
192 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

which  they  will  finally  silence ;  he 
foresees  the  harvest  in  the  seed  that 
lies  barely  covered  on  the  surface ; 
and,  afar  off,  his  ear  notes  the  final 
crash  of  that  which  at  the  moment 
seems  to  carry  with  it  the  assurance  of 
eternal  duration.  Such  a  man  secures 
the  vitality  of  his  time,  but  he  escapes 
its  limitation  of  vision  by  seeing  it 
clearly  and  seeing  it  whole ;  he  cor 
rects  the  teaching  of  the  time  spirit 
by  constant  reference  to  the  teaching 
of  the  Eternal  Spirit  imparted  in  the 
long  training  and  the  wide  revelation 
of  history.  The  day  is  beautiful  and 
significant,  or  ominous  and  tragic,  to 
him  as  it  discloses  its  relation  to  the 
good  or  the  evil  of  the  years  that  are 
gone.  And  these  vital  associations, 
these  deep  historic  connections,  are 
brought  to  light  with  peculiar  clear 
ness  in  literature.  Beyond  all  other 
13  193 


Liberation  from  One's  Time. 

means  of  enfranchisement,  the  book 
liberates  a  man  from  imprisonment 
within  the  narrow  limits  of  his  own 
time ;  it  makes  him  free  of  all  times. 
He  lives  in  all  periods,  under  all 
forms  of  government,  in  all  social 
conditions ;  the  mind  of  antiquity,  of 
mediaevalism,  of  the  Renaissance,  is 
as  open  to  him  as  the  mind  of  his  own 
day,  and  so  he  is  able  to  look  upon 
human  life  in  its  entirety. 


194 


Chapter  XVII. 
Liberation  from  One's  Place. 


instinct  which  drives  men  to 
travel  is  at  bottom  identical  with 
that  which  fills  men  with  passionate 
desire  to  know  what  is  in  life.  Time 
and  strength  are  often  wasted  in 
restless  change  from  place  to  place  ; 
but  real  wandering,  however  aimless 
in  mood,  is  always  education.  To 
know  one's  neighbours  and  to  be  on 
good  terms  with  the  community  in 
which  one  lives  are  the  beginning  of 
sound  relations  to  the  world  at  large  ; 
but  one  never  knows  his  village  in 
any  real  sense  until  he  knows  the 
world.  The  distant  hills  which  seem 
'95 


Liberation  from  One's  Place. 

to  be  always  calling  the  imaginative 
boy  away  from  the  familiar  fields  and 
hearth  do  not  conspire  against  his 
peace,  however  much  they  may  con 
spire  against  his  comfort ;  they  help 
him  to  the  fulfilment  of  his  destiny 
by  suggesting  to  his  imagination  the 
deeper  experience,  the  richer  growth, 
the  higher  tasks  which  await  him  in 
the  world  beyond  the  horizon.  Man 
is  a  wanderer  by  the  law  of  his  life ; 
and  if  he  never  leaves  his  home  in 
which  he  is  born,  he  never  builds  a 
home  of  his  own. 

It  is  the  law  of  life  that  a  child 
should  leave  his  father  and  separate 
himself  from  his  inherited  surround 
ings,  in  order  that  by  self-unfolding 
and  self-realisation  he  may  substi 
tute  a  conscious  for  an  unconscious,  a 
moral  for  an  instinctive  relation.  The 
instinct  of  the  myth-makers  was 
196 


Liberation  from  One's  Place. 

sound  when  it  led  them  to  attach 
such  importance  to  the  wandering 
and  the  return ;  the  separation  ef 
fected  in  order  that  individuality  and 
character  might  be  realised  through 
isolation  and  experience,  the  return 
voluntarily  made  through  clear  recog 
nition  of  the  soundness  of  the  primi 
tive  relations,  the  beauty  of  the  ser 
vice  of  the  older  and  wiser  to  the 
younger  and  the  more  ignorant.  We 
are  born  into  relations  which  we  ac 
cept  as  normal  and  inevitable ;  we 
break  away  from  them  in  order  that 
by  detachment  we  may  see  them  ob 
jectively  and  from  a  distance,  and  that 
we  may  come  to  self-consciousness ; 
we  resume  these  relations  of  delib 
erate  purpose  and  with  clear  percep 
tion  of  their  moral  significance.  So 
the  boy,  grown  to  manhood,  returns 
to  his  home  from  the  world  in  which 
197 


Liberation  from  One's  Place. 

he  has  tested  himself  and  seen  for  the 
first  time,  with  clear  eyes,  the  depth 
and  beauty  of  its  service  in  the  spirit 
ual  order;  so  the  man  who  has  re 
volted  from  the  barren  and  shal 
low  dogmatic  statement  of  a  spiritual 
truth  returns,  in  riper  years  and  with 
a  deeper  insight,  to  the  truth  which 
is  no  longer  matter  of  inherited  be 
lief  but  of  vital  need  and  perception. 

The  ripe,  mature,  full  mind  not 
only  escapes  the  limitation  of  the  time 
in  which  it  finds  itself;  it  also  escapes 
from  the  limitations  of  the  place  in 
which  it  happens  to  be.  A  man  of 
deep  culture  cannot  be  a  provincial ; 
he  must  be  a  citizen  of  the  world. 
The  man  of  provincial  tastes  and 
ideas  owns  the  acres ;  the  man  of  cul 
ture  commands  the  landscape.  He 
knows  the  world  beyond  the  hills ; 
he  sees  the  great  movement  of  life 
198 


Liberation  from  One's  Place. 

from  which  the  village  seems  almost 
shut  out ;  he  shares  those  inclusive 
experiences  which  come  to  each  age 
and  give  each  age  a  character  of  its 
own.  He  is  in  fellowship  and  sym 
pathy  with  the  smaller  community  at 
his  doors,  but  he  belongs  also  to  that 
greater  community  which  is  coter 
minous  with  humanity  itself.  He  is 
not  disloyal  to  his  immediate  sur 
roundings  when  he  leaves  them  for 
exploration,  travel,  and  discovery ;  he 
is  fulfilling  that  law  of  life  which  con 
ditions  true  valuation  of  that  into 
which  one  is  born  upon  clear  percep 
tion  of  that  which  one  must  acquire 
for  himself. 

The  wanderings  of  individuals  and 
races,  which  form  so  large  a  part  of 
the  substance  of  history,  are  witnesses 
of  that  craving  for  deeper  experience 
and  wider  knowledge  which  is  one  of 
199 


Liberation  from  One's  Place. 

the  springs  of  human  progress.  The 
American  cares  for  Europe  not  for  its 
more  skilful  and  elaborate  ministra 
tion  to  his  comfort ;  he  is  drawn  to 
wards  it  through  the  appeal  of  its  rich 
historic  life  to  his  imagination  and 
through  the  diversity  and  variety  of 
its  social  and  racial  phenomena.  And 
in  like  manner  the  European  seeks  the 
East,  not  simply  as  a  matter  of  idle 
curiosity,  but  because  he  finds  in  the 
East  conditions  which  are  set  in  such 
sharp  contrast  with  those  with  which 
he  is  familiar.  The  instinct  for  ex 
pansion  which  gives  human  history 
its  meaning  and  interest  is  constantly 
urging  the  man  of  sensitive  mind  to 
secure  by  observation  that  which  he 
cannot  get  by  experience. 

To  secure  the  most  complete  de 
velopment  one  must  live  in  one's 
time  and  yet  live  above  it,  and  one 

200 


Liberation  from  One's  Place. 

must  also  live  in  one's  home  and  yet 
live,  at  the  same  time,  in  the  world. 
The  life  which  is  bounded  in  knowl 
edge,  interest,  and  activity  by  the  in 
visible  but  real  and  limiting  walls  of  a 
small  community  is  often  definite  in 
aim,  effective  in  action,  and  upright 
in  intention ;  but  it  cannot  be  rich, 
varied,  generous,  and  stimulating. 
The  life,  on  the  other  hand,  which  is 
entirely  detached  from  local  associa 
tions  and  tasks  is  often  interesting, 
liberalising,  and  catholic  in  spirit ;  but 
it  cannot  be  original  or  productive. 
A  sound  life  —  balanced,  poised,  and 
intelligently  directed  —  must  stand 
strongly  in  both  local  and  universal 
relations ;  it  must  have  the  vitality  and 
warmth  of  the  first,  and  the  breadth 
and  range  of  the  second. 

This    liberation     from    provincial 
ism  is  not  only  one  of  the  signs  of 

201 


Liberation  from  One's  Place. 

culture,  but  it  is  also  one  of  its  finest 
results  ;  it  registers  a  high  degree  of 
advancement.  For  the  man  who  has 
passed  beyond  the  prejudices,  mis 
conceptions,  and  narrowness  of  pro 
vincialism  has  gone  far  on  the  road 
to  self-education.  He  has  made  as 
marked  an  advance  on  the  position  of 
the  great  mass  of  his  contemporaries 
as  that  position  is  an  advance  on  the 
earlier  stages  of  barbarism.  The  bar 
barian  lives  only  in  his  tribe ;  the 
civilised  man,  in  the  exact  degree  in 
which  he  is  civilised,  lives  with  hu 
manity.  Books  are  among  the  rich 
est  resources  against  narrowing  local 
influences  ;  they  are  the  ripest  exposi 
tions  of  the  world-spirit.  To  know 
the  typical  books  of  the  race  is  to  be  in 
touch  with  those  elements  of  thought 
and  experience  which  are  shared  by 
men  of  all  countries.  Without  a 

202 


Liberation  from  One!s  Place. 

knowledge  of  these  books  a  man 
never  really  gets  at  the  life  of  locali 
ties  which  are  foreign  to  him ;  never 
really  sees  those  historic  places  about 
which  the  traditions  of  civilisation 
have  gathered.  Travel  is  robbed  of 
half  its  educational  value  unless  one 
carries  with  him  a  knowledge  of  that 
which  he  looks  at  for  the  first  time 
with  his  own  eyes.  No  American 
sees  England  unless  he  carries  Eng 
land  in  his  memory  and  imagination. 
Westminster  Abbey  is  devoid  of  spir 
itual  significance  to  the  man  who  is 
ignorant  of  the  life  out  of  which  it 
grew,  and  of  the  history  which  is 
written  in  its  architecture  and  its  me 
morials.  The  emancipation  from  the 
limitations  of  locality  is  greatly  aided 
by  travel,  but  it  is  accomplished  only 
by  intimate  knowledge  of  the  greater 
books. 

203 


Chapter  XVIII. 

The  Unconscious  Element. 

\T7HILE  it  is  true  that  the  greatest 
books  betray  the  most  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  time  in  which 
they  are  written,  and  disclose  the  im 
press  of  that  time  in  thought,  struc 
ture,  and  style,  it  is  also  true  that  such 
books  are  so  essentially  independent 
of  contemporary  forms  and  moods 
that  they  largely  escape  the  vicissi 
tudes  which  attend  those  forms  and 
moods.  The  element  of  enduring 
interest  in  them  outweighs  the  acci 
dents  of  local  speech  or  provincial 
knowledge,  as  the  force  and  genius 
of  Caesar  survive  the  armor  he  wore 
and  the  language  he  spoke.  A  great 
204 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

book  is  a  possession  for  all  time,  be 
cause  a  writer  of  the  first  rank  is  the 
contemporary  of  every  generation ; 
he  is  never  outgrown,  exhausted,  or 
even  old-fashioned,  although  the  gar 
ments  he  wore  may  have  been  laid 
aside  long  ago. 

In  this  permanent  quality,  un 
changed  by  changes  of  taste  and  form, 
resides  the  secret  of  that  charm  which 
draws  about  the  great  poets  men  and 
women  of  each  succeeding  period, 
eager  to  listen  to  words  which  thrilled 
the  world  when  it  was  young,  and 
which  have  a  new  meaning  for  every 
new  age.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
Homer  will  speak  to  men  as  long  as 
language  survives,  and  that  transla 
tion  will  follow  translation  to  the  end 
of  time.  What  Robinson  said  of  the 
Bible  in  one  of  the  great  moments  of 
modern  history  may  be  said  of  the 
205 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

greater  works  of  literature :  more 
light  will  always  stream  from  them. 
Indeed,  many  of  them  will  not  be 
understood  until  they  are  read  in  the 
light  of  long  periods  of  history ;  for 
as  the  great  books  are  interpretations 
of  life,  so  life  in  its  historic  revelation 
is  one  continuous  commentary  on  the 
greater  books. 

This  preponderance  of  the  perma 
nent  over  the  accidental  or  tempo 
rary  in  books  of  this  class  is  largely 
due  to  the  unconscious  element  which 
plays  so  great  a  part  in  them :  the 
element  of  universal  experience,  in 
which  every  man  shares  in  the  exact 
degree  in  which,  in  mind  and  heart, 
he  approaches  greatness.  It  is  idle 
to  attempt  to  separate  arbitrarily  in 
Shakespeare,  for  instance,  those  ele 
ments  in  the  poet's  work  which  were 
deliberately  introduced  from  those 
206 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

which  went  into  it  by  the  unconscious 
action  of  his  whole  nature ;  but  no 
one  can  study  the  plays  intelligently 
without  becoming  more  and  more 
clearly  aware  of  those  depths  of  life 
which  moved  in  the  poet  before  they 
moved  in  his  work ;  which  enlarged, 
enriched,  and  silently  reorganised  his 
view  of  life  and  his  power  of  trans 
lating  life  out  of  individual  into  uni 
versal  terms.  It  would  be  impossible, 
for  instance,  to  write  such  a  play  as 
"  The  Tempest "  by  sheer  force  of 
intellect ;  in  the  creation  of  such  a 
work  there  is  involved,  beyond  liter 
ary  skill,  calculation,  and  deep  study 
of  the  relation  of  thought  to  form,  a 
ripeness  of  spirit,  a  clearness  of  in 
sight,  a  richness  of  imagination,  which 
are  so  much  part  of  the  very  soul  of 
the  poet  that  he  does  not  separate 
them  in  thought,  and  cannot  con- 
207 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

sciously  balance,  adjust,  and  employ 
them.  They  are  quite  beyond  his 
immediate  control,  as  they  are  beyond 
all  attempts  to  imitate  them. 

Cleverness  may  learn  all  the  forms 
and  methods,  but  it  is  powerless  to 
imitate  greatness ;  it  can  simulate  the 
conscious,  dexterous  side  of  greatness, 
but  it  cannot  simulate  the  unconscious, 
vital  side.  The  moment  a  man  like 
Voltaire  attempts  to  deal  with  such  a 
character  as  Joan  of  Arc,  his  spiritual 
and  artistic  limitations  become  pain 
fully  apparent ;  of  cleverness  there  is 
no  lack,  but  of  reverence,  insight, 
depth  of  feeling,  the  affinity  of  the 
great  imagination  for  the  great  nature 
or  deed,  there  is  no  sign.  The  man 
is  entirely  and  hopelessly  incapacitated 
for  the  work  by  virtue  of  certain  limi 
tations  in  his  own  nature  of  which 
he  is  obviously  in  entire  ignorance. 
208 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

The  conscious  skill  of  Voltaire  was 
delicate,  subtle,  full  of  vitality  ;  but  the 
unconscious  side  of  his  nature  was 
essentially  shallow,  thin,  largely  un 
developed;  and  it  is  the  preponder 
ance  of  the  unconscious  over  the 
conscious  in  a  man's  life  which  makes 
him  great  in  himself  and  equips  him 
for  work  of  the  highest  quality.  No 
man  can  put  his  skill  to  the  highest  use 
and  give  his  knowledge  the  final  touch 
of  individuality  until  both  are  so  en 
tirely  incorporated  in  his  personality 
that  they  have  become  part  of  himself. 
This  deepest  and  most  vital  of  all 
the  processes  of  self-education  and 
self-unfolding,  which  is  brought  to 
such  perfection  in  men  of  the  highest 
creative  power,  is  the  fundamental 
process  of  culture,  —  the  chief  method 
which  every  man  uses,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  who  brings  his  nature 
H  209 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

to  complete  ripeness  of  quality  and 
power.  The  absorption  of  vital  ex 
perience  and  knowledge  which  went 
on  in  Shakespeare  enlarged  and  clari 
fied  his  vision  and  insight  to  such  a 
degree  that  both  became  not  only 
searching,  but  veracious  in  a  rare  de 
gree  ;  life  was  opened  to  him  on 
many  sides  by  the  expansion  first  ac 
complished  in  himself.  This  is  say 
ing  again  what  has  been  said  so  many 
times,  but  cannot  be  said  too  often,  — 
that,  in  order  to  give  one's  work  a 
touch  of  greatness,  a  man  must  first 
have  a  touch  of  greatness  in  his  own 
nature.  But  greatness  is  not  an  irre 
sponsible  and  undirected  growth ;  it 
is  as  definitely  conditioned  on  certain 
obediences  to  intellectual  discipline 
and  spiritual  law  as  is  any  kind  of 
lesser  skill  conditioned  on  practice 
and  work.  One  of  these  conditions 


2IO 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

is  the  development  of  the  power  to 
turn  conscious  processes  of  observa 
tion,  emotion,  and  skill  into  uncon 
scious  processes ;  to  enrich  the  nature 
below  the  surface,  so  to  speak;  to 
make  the  soil  productive  by  making 
it  deep  and  rich.  Men  of  mere  skill 
always  stop  short  of  this  final  process 
of  self-development,  and  always  stop 
short  of  those  final  achievements 
which  sum  up  and  express  all  that 
has  been  known  or  felt  about  a  sub 
ject  and  give  it  permanent  form  ;  men 
of  essential  greatness  take  this  last 
step  in  that  higher  education  which 
makes  one  master  of  the  force  of  his 
personality,  and  give  his  words  and 
works  universal  range  and  perennial 
interest. 

Now,  this  is  the  deepest  quality  in 
the  books  of  life,  which  a  student 
may  not  only  enjoy  to  the  full,  but 

211 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

may  also  absorb  and  make  his  own. 
When  Alfred  de  Musset,  in  an  oft- 
repeated  phrase,  said  that  it  takes  a 
great  deal  of  life  to  make  a  little  art, 
he  was  not  only  affirming  the  reality 
of  this  process  of  passing  experience 
through  consciousness  into  the  un 
conscious  side  of  a  man's  nature,  but 
he  was  also  hinting  at  one  of  the 
greatest  resources  of  pleasure  and 
growth.  For  time  and  life  continu 
ally  enrich  the  man  who  has  learned 
the  secret  of  turning  experience 
and  observation  into  knowledge  and 
power.  It  is  a  secret  in  the  sense  in 
which  every  vital  process  is  a  secret ; 
but  it  is  not  a  trick,  a  skill,  or  a 
method  which  may  be  communicated 
in  a  formula.  Mrs.  Ward  describes 
a  character  in  one  of  her  stories  as 
having  passed  through  a  great  culture 
into  a  great  simplicity  of  nature ;  in 

212 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

other  words,  culture  had  wrought  its 
perfect  work,  and  the  man  had  passed 
through  wide  and  intensely  self-con 
scious  activity  into  the  repose  and 
simplicity  of  self-unconsciousness  ;  his 
knowledge  had  become  so  completely 
a  part  of  himself  that  he  had  ceased 
to  be  conscious  of  it  as  a  thing  dis 
tinct  from  himself.  There  is  no  easy 
road  to  this  last  height  in  the  long  and 
painful  process  of  education  ;  and  time 
is  an  essential  element  in  the  process, 
because  it  is  a  matter  of  growth. 

There  are,  it  is  true,  a  few  men  and 
women  who  seem  born  with  this 
power  of  living  in  the  heart  of  things 
and  possessing  them  in  the  imagina 
tion  without  having  gone  through  the 
long  and  painful  stages  of  preparatory 
education ;  but  genius  is  not  only  in 
explicable,  it  is  also  so  rare  that  for 
the  immense  majority  of  men  any  ef- 
213 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

fort  to  comprehend  it  must  be  purely 
academic.  It  is  enough  to  know  that 
if  we  are  in  any  degree  to  share  with 
men  and  women  of  genius  the  faculty 
of  vision,  insight,  and  creative  energy, 
we  must  master  the  conditions  which 
favor  the  development  of  those  su 
preme  gifts.  There  is  laid,  therefore, 
upon  the  student  who  wishes  to  get 
the  vital  quality  of  literature  the  ne 
cessity  of  repeating,  by  deliberate  and 
intelligent  design,  the  process  which 
in  so  many  of  the  masters  of  the  arts 
has  been,  apparently,  accomplished 
instinctively.  To  make  observation, 
study,  and  experience  part  of  one's 
spiritual  and  intellectual  capital,  it  is, 
in  the  first  place,  necessary  to  saturate 
one's  self  with  that  which  one  is 
studying ;  to  possess  it  by  constant 
familiarity;  to  let  the  imagination 
play  upon  it;  to  meditate  upon  it. 
214 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

And  it  is  necessary,  in  the  second 
place,  to  make  this  practice  habitual ; 
when  it  becomes  habitual,  it  will  be 
come  largely  unconscious  :  one  does 
it  by  instinct  rather  than  by  delibera 
tion.  This  process  is  illustrated  in 
every  successful  attempt  to  master 
any  art.  In  the  art  of  speaking,  for 
instance,  the  beginner  is  hampered 
by  an  embarrassing  consciousness  of 
his  hands,  feet,  speech ;  he  cannot 
forget  himself  and  surrender  himself 
to  his  thought  or  his  emotion  ;  he 
dare  not  trust  himself.  -  He  must, 
therefore,  train  himself  through  mind, 
voice,  and  body ;  he  must  submit  to 
constant  and  long-sustained  practice, 
thinking  out  point  by  point  what  he 
shall  say  and  how  he  shall  say  it. 
This  process  is,  at  the  start,  partly 
mechanical ;  in  the  nature  of  things  it 
must  be  entirely  within  the  view  and 
215 


The  Unconscious  Element. 

control  of  a  vigilant  consciousness. 
But  as  the  training  progresses,  the 
element  of  self-consciousness  steadily 
diminishes,  until,  in  great  moments, 
the  true  orator,  become  one  harmo 
nious  instrument  of  expression,  sur 
renders  himself  to  his  theme,  and  his 
personality  shines  clear  and  luminous 
through  speech,  articulation,  and  ges 
ture.  The  unconscious  nature  of  the 
man  subordinates  his  skill  wholly  to 
its  own  uses.  In  like  manner,  in 
every  kind  of  self-expression,  the  stu 
dent  who  puts  imagination,  vitality, 
and  sincerity  into  the  work  of  prelim 
inary  education,  comes  at  last  to  full 
command  of  himself,  and  gives  com 
plete  expression  to  that  which  is  deep 
est  and  most  individual  in  him. 
Time,  discipline,  study,  and  thought 
enrich  every  nature  which  is  receptive 
and  responsive. 

216 


Chapter  XIX. 
The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

1VTO  characters  appeal  more  power 
fully  to  the  imagination  than 
those  impressive  figures  about  whom 
the  literature  of  tragedy  moves,  — 
figures  associated  with  the  greatest 
passions  and  the  most  appalling  sor 
rows.  The  well-balanced  man,  who 
rises  step  by  step  through  discipline 
and  work  to  the  highest  place  of 
influence  and  power,  is  applauded 
and  admired ;  but  the  heart  of  the 
world  goes  out  to  those  who,  like 
CEdipus,  are  overmatched  by  a  fate 
which  pursues  with  relentless  step,  or, 
217 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

like  Hamlet,  are  overweighted  with 
tasks  too  heavy  or  too  terrible  for 
them.  Agamemnon,  QEdipus,  Ores 
tes,  Hamlet,  Lear,  Pere  Goriot,  are 
supreme  figures  in  that  world  of  the 
imagination  in  which  the  poets  have 
endeavoured  both  to  reflect  and  to 
interpret  the  world  as  men  see  it  and 
act  in  it. 

The  essence  of  tragedy  is  the  col 
lision  between  the  individual  will, 
impulse,  or  action,  and  society  in 
some  form  of  its  organisation,  or 
those  unwritten  laws  of  life  which 
we  call  the  laws  of  God.  The  tragic 
character  is  always  a  lawbreaker,  but 
not  always  a  criminal ;  he  is,  indeed, 
often  the  servant  of  a  new  idea  which 
sets  him,  as  in  the  case  of  Guido 
Bruno,  in  opposition  to  an  established 
order  of  knowledge  ;  he  is  sometimes, 
as  in  the  case  of  Socrates,  a  teacher  of 
218 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

truths  which  make  him  a  menace  to 
lower  conceptions  of  citizenship  and 
narrower  ideas  of  personal  life  ;  or  he 
is,  as  in  the  case  of  Othello  and  Paoli, 
the  victim  of  passions  which  over 
power  the  will  and  throw  the  whole 
life  out  of  relation  to  its  moral  and 
social  environment.  The  interest 
with  which  the  tragic  character  is 
always  invested  is  due  not  only  to 
the  exceptional  .experience  in  which 
the  tragic  situation  always  culmi 
nates,  but  also  to  the  self-surrender 
which  precedes  the  penalty  and  the 
expiation. 

There  is  a  fallacy  at  the  bottom  of 
the  admiration  we  feel  when  a  rich 
nature  throws  restraint  of  any  kind 
to  the  winds  and  gives  itself  up 
wholly  to  some  impulse  or  passion,  — 
the  fallacy  of  supposing  that  by  a 
violent  break  with  existing  conditions 
219 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

freedom  can  be  secured  ;  for  the 
world  loves  freedom,  even  when  it 
is  too  slothful  or  too  cowardly  to 
pay  the  price  which  it  exacts.  That 
admiration  arises,  however,  from  a 
sound  instinct,  —  the  instinct  which 
makes  us  love  both  power  and  self- 
sacrifice,  even  when  the  first  is  ill- 
directed  and  the  second  wasted.  The 
vast  majority  of  men  are  content  to 
do  their  work  quietly  and  in  obscur- 
1  ity,  with  no  disclosure  of  originality, 
|  freshness,  or  force ;  they  obey  law, 
"  conform  to  custom,  respect  the  con 
ventionalities  of  their  age;  they  ap 
pear  to  be  lacking  in  representative 
quality  ;  they  are,  apparently,  the 
faithful  and  uninteresting  drudges  of 
society.  There  are,  it  is  true,  a  host  of 
commonplace  persons,  in  every  gen 
eration,  who  perform  uninteresting 
tasks  in  a  mechanical  spirit ;  but  it 

220 


\ 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

must  not  be  inferred  that  a  man  is 
either  craven  or  cowardly  because  he 
does  not  break  from  the  circle  in 
which  he  finds  himself  and  make  a 
bold  and  picturesque  rush  for  free 
dom  ;  it  may  be  that  freedom  is  to 
be  won  for  him  in  the  silent  and 
faithful  doing  of  the  work  which  lies 
next  him ;  it  is  certain  that  the  high 
est  power  and  the  noblest  freedom 
are  secured,  not  by  the  submission 
which  fears  to  fight,  but  by  that 
which  accepts  the  discipline  for  the 
sake  of  the  mastery  which  is  con 
ditioned  upon  it. 

There    are,    however,    conditions 
which  no  man  can  control,  and  which  »   / 
are  in  their  nature  essentially  tragic ;  * 
and    men    and  women  who    are    in 
volved    in     these    conditions    cannot 
elude   a  fate  for  which  they  are  not 
responsible  and  from  which  they  can- 

221 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

not  escape.  This  was  true  of  many 
of  the  greatest  characters  in  classical 
tragedy,  and  it  is  true  also  of  many 
of  the  characters  in  modern  tragedy. 
The  world  looks  with  bated  breath 
\J  on  a  struggle  of  the  noblest  heroism, 
in  which  men  and  women,  matched 
against  overwhelming  social  forces, 
bear  their  part  with  sublime  and  un 
faltering  courage,  and  by  the  com 
pleteness  of  their  self-surrender  assert 
their  sovereignty  even  in  the  hour 
when  disaster  seems  to  crush  and 
destroy  them.  To  these  striking 
figures,  isolated  by  the  greatness  of 
their  fate,  the  heart  of  the  world  has 
always  gone  out  as  to  the  noblest 
of  its  children.  Solitary  in  the  pos 
session  of  some  new  conception  of 
duty  or  of  truth,  separated  from  the 
mass  of  their  fellows  by  that  lack 
of  sympathy  which  springs  from  im- 


222 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

perfect  comprehension  of  higher  aims 
or  deeper  insight,  these  sublime 
strugglers  against  ignorance,  preju 
dice,  caste,  and  power,  become  the 
heroes  and  martyrs  of  the  race ;  they 
announce  the  advent  of  new  con 
ceptions  of  social  order  and  indi 
vidual  rights ;  they  incarnate  the 
imperishable  soul  of  humanity  in  its 
long  and  terrible  endeavour  to  bring 
the  institutions  and  the  ideas  of  men 
into  harmony  with  a  higher  order  of 
life. 

The  tragic  element  has,  therefore, 
many  aspects,  —  sometimes  lawless  I  X 
and  destructive,  sometimes  self-sacri 
ficing  and  instructive  ;  but  its  illustra 
tion  in  literature  in  any  form  is  not 
only  profoundly  interesting,  but  pro 
foundly  instructive  as  well.  In  no 
other  literary  form  is  the  stuff  of 
which  life  is  made  wrought  into  such 
223 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

commanding  figures ;  in  no  other 
form  are  the  deeper  possibilities  of 
life  brought  into  such  clear  view  ;  in 
no  other  form  are  the  fundamental 
laws  of  life  disclosed  in  a  light  at 
once  so  searching  and  so  beautiful  in 
its  revealing  power.  If  all  the  his 
tories  were  lost  and  all  the  ethical 
discussions  forgotten,  the  moral  qual 
ity  of  life  and  the  tremendous  signifi 
cance  of  character  would  find  adequate 
illustration  in  the  great  tragedies. 
They  lay  bare  the  very  heart  of  man 
under  all  historic  conditions ;  they 
make  us  aware  of  the  range  of  his 
experiences;  they  uncover  the  depths 
by  which  he  is  surrounded.  They 
enable  us  to  see,  in  lightning  flashes, 
the  undiscovered  territory  which  in 
closes  the  little  island  on  which  we 
live ;  they  light  up  the  mysterious 
background  of  invisible  forces  against 
224 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

which  we  play  our  parts  and  work 
out  our  destiny. 

To  the  student  of  literature,  who 
strives  not  only  to  enjoy  but  to  com-  > 
prehend,  tragedy  brings  all  the  mate-// 
rials  for  a  deep  and  genuine  education. 
Instead  of  a  philosophical  or  ethical 
statement  of  principles,  it  offers  living 
illustration  of  ethical  law  as  revealed 
in  the  greatest  deeds  and  the  most 
heroic  experiences ;  it  discloses  the 
secret  of  the  age  which  created  it, — 
for  in  no  other  literary  form  are  the 
fundamental  conceptions  of  a  period 
so  deeply  involved  or  so  clearly  set 
forth.  The  very  springs  of  Greek 
character  are  uncovered  in  the  Greek  */ 
tragedies  ;  and  the  tremendous  forces  .  / 
liberated  by  the  Renaissance  are  no- 
where  else  so  strikingly  brought  to 
light  as  in  that  group  of  tragedies 
which  were  produced  in  so  many 
15  225 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

countries,  by  so  many  men,  at  the 
close  of  that  momentous  epoch. 
When  literature  runs  mainly  to  the 
tragic  form,  it  may  be  assumed  that 
the  spiritual  force  of  the  race  has  ex 
pressed  itself  afresh,  and  that  a  race,  or 
a  group  of  races,  has  passed  through 
one  of  those  searching  experiences 
which  bring  men  again  face  to  face 
with  the  facts  of  life ;  for  the  produc 
tion  of  tragedy  involves  thought  of 
such  depth,  insight  of  such  clearness, 
and  imaginative  power  of  such  quality 
and  range  that  it  is  possible,  on  a 
great  scale,  only  when  the  springs  of 
passion  and  action  have  been  pro 
foundly  stirred.  The  appearance  of 
tragedy  marks,  therefore,  those  mo 
ments  when  men  manifest,  without 
calculation  or  restraint,  all  the  power 
that  is  in  them ;  and  into  no  other 
literary  form  is  the  vital  force  poured 
226 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

so  lavishly.  It  is  the  instinctive 
recognition  of  this  unveiling  of  the 
soul  of  man  which  gives  the  tragedy 
such  impressiveness  even  when  it  is 
haltingly  represented  on  the  stage, 
and  which  subdues  the  imagination 
to  its  mood  when  the  solitary  reader 
comes  under  its  spell.  The  life  of 
the  race  is  sacred  in  those  great  pas 
sages  which  record  its  sufferings  ;  and 
nothing  makes  us  so  aware  of  our 
unity  with  our  kind  in  all  times  and 
under  all  circumstances  as  the  com 
munity  of  suffering  in  which,  actively 
or  passively,  all  men  share. 

In  the  tragedy  the  student  of  liter 
ature  is  brought  into  the  most  inti-  ./ 
mate  relation  with  his  race  in  those  /> 
moments  when  its  deepest  experiences 
are  laid  bare ;  he  enters  into  its  life 
when  that  life  is  passing  through  its 
most  momentous  passages ;  he  is  pres- 
227 


The  Teaching  of  Tragedy. 

ent  in  those  hidden  places  where  it 
confesses  its  highest  hopes,  reveals  its 
most  terrible  passions,  suffers  its  most 
appalling  punishments,  and  passes  on, 
through  anguish  and  sacrifice,  to  its 
new  day  of  thought  and  achievement. 


228 


Chapter  XX. 
The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 


of  the  chief  elements  in  fic 
tion  which  make  for  culture  is, 
primarily,  its  disclosure  of  the  ele 
mentary  types  of  character  and  ex 
perience.  A  single  illustration  of  this 
quality  will  suggest  its  presence  in  all 
novels  of  the  first  rank  and  its  uni 
versal  interest  and  importance.  The 
aspirations,  dreams,  devotions,  and 
sacrifices  of  men  are  as  real  as  their 
response  to  self-interest  or  their  tend 
ency  to  the  conventional  and  the 
commonplace  ;  and  they  are,  in  the 
long  run,  a  great  deal  more  influen 
tial.  They  have  wider  play;  they 
are  more  compelling;  and  they  are 
of  the  very  highest  significance,  be- 
229 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

cause  they  spring  out  of  that  which 
is  deepest  and  most  distinctive  in  hu 
man  nature.  A  host  of  men  never 
give  these  higher  impulses,  these  spir 
itual  aptitudes  and  possibilities,  full 
play;  but  they  are  in  all  men,  and  all 
men  recognise  them  and  crave  an  ex 
pression  of  them.  Nothing  is  truer, 
on  the  lowest  and  most  practical  plane, 
than  the  old  declaration  that  men  do 
not  live  by  bread  alone  ;  they  some 
times  exist  on  bread,  because  nothing 
better  is  to  be  had  at  the  moment; 
but  they  live  only  in  the  full  and  free 
play  of  all  their  activities,  in  the  com 
plete  expression  not  only  of  what  is 
most  pressing  in  interest  and  impor 
tance  at  a  given  time,  but  of  that  which 
is  potential  and  possible  at  all  times. 

The  novel  of  romance  and  adven 
ture  has  had  a  long  history,  and  the 
elements  of  which  it  is  compounded 
230 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

are  recognisable  long  before  they  took 
the  form  of  fiction.  Two  figures  ap 
pear  and  reappear  in  the  mythology 
of  every  poetic  people,  —  the  hero  and 
the  wanderer ;  the  man  who  achieves 
and  the  man  who  experiences ;  the 
man  who  masters  life  by  superiority 
of  soul  or  body,  and  the  man  who 
masters  it  by  completeness  of  knowl 
edge.  It  is  interesting  and  pathetic 
to  find  how  universally  these  two  fig 
ures  held  the  attention  and  stirred  the 
hearts  of  primitive  men ;  how  infi 
nitely  varied  are  their  tasks,  their  perils, 
and  their  vicissitudes.  They  wear  so 
many  guises,  they  bear  so  many 
names,  they  travel  so  far  and  compass 
so  much  experience  that  it  is  impos 
sible,  in  any  interpretation  of  mythol 
ogy,  to  escape  the  conviction  that 
they  were  the  dominant  types  in  the 
thought  of  the  myth-makers.  And 
231 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

these  earliest  story-makers  were  not 
idle  dreamers,  entertaining  themselves 
by  endless  manufacture  of  imaginary 
incidents,  conditions,  and  persons. 
They  were,  on  the  contrary,  the  ob 
servers,  the  students,  the  scientists  of 
their  period  ;  their  endeavour  was  not 
to  create  a  fiction,  but  to  explain  the 
world  and  themselves.  Their  obser 
vation  was  imperfect,  and  they  made 
ludicrous  mistakes  of  fact  because  they 
lacked  both  knowledge  and  training ; 
but  they  made  free  use  of  the  creative 
faculty,  and  there  is,  consequently, 
a  good  deal  more  truth  in  their  dar 
ing  guesses  than  in  many  of  those 
provisional  explanations  of  nature  and 
ourselves  which  have  been  based  too 
exclusively  on  scrutiny  of  the  obvious 
fact,  and  indifference  to  the  fact,  which 
is  not  less  a  fact  because  it  is  elusive. 
The  myth-makers  endeavoured  to 
232 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

explain  the  world,  but  that  was  only 
one-half  of  their  endeavour  ;  they  at 
tempted  also  to  explain  themselves. 
They  discovered  the  striking  analo 
gies  between  certain  natural  phenom 
ena  or  processes  and  the  phenomena 
and  processes  of  their  own  nature ; 
they  discovered  the  tasks  and  wan 
derings  of  the  sun,  and  they  per 
ceived  the  singular  resemblance  of 
these  tasks  and  wanderings  to  the  hap 
penings  of  their  own  lives.  So  the 
hero  and  the  wanderer  became  sub 
jective  as  well  as  objective,  and  sym 
bolised  what  was  deepest  and  most 
universal  in  human  nature  and  human 
experience,  as  well  as  what  was  most 
striking  in  the  external  world.  When 
primitive  men  looked  into  their  hearts 
and  their  experience,  they  found  their 
deepest  hopes,  longings,  and  possi 
bilities  bound  up  and  worked  out  in 
233 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

two  careers,  —  the  career  of  the  hero 
and  the  career  of  the  wanderer. 

These  two  figures  became  the 
commanding  types  of  all  the  nobler 
mythologies,  because  they  symbolised 
what  was  best,  deepest,  and  most 
real  in  human  nature  and  life.  They 
represent  the  possible  reach  and  the 
occasional  achievement  of  the  human 
soul ;  they  stand  for  that  which  is 
potential  as  well  as  for  that  which  is 
actual  in  human  experience.  Few 
men  achieve  or  experience  on  a  great 
scale ;  but  these  few  are  typical,  and 
are,  therefore,  transcendent  in  inter 
est.  The  average  commonplace  man 
fills  great  space  in  contemporary  his 
tory,  as  in  the  history  of  all  times, 
and  his  character  and  career  are  well 
worth  the  closest  study  and  the  finest 
art  of  the  writer;  but  the  average 
man,  who  never  achieves  greatly,  and 
234 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

to  whom  no  striking  or  dramatic  ex 
perience  comes,  has  all  the  possibili 
ties  of  action  and  suffering  in  his 
nature,  and  is  profoundly  interested 
in  these  more  impressive  aspects  of 
life.  Truth  to  fact  is  essential  to  all 
sound  art,  but  absolute  veracity  in 
volves  the  whole  truth,  —  the  truth  of 
the  exceptional  as  well  as  of  the  aver 
age  experience ;  the  truth  of  the  im 
agination  as  well  as  of  observation. 

The  hero  and  the  wanderer  are 
still,  and  always  will  be,  the  great 
human  types ;  and  they  are,  there 
fore,  the  types  which  will  continue 
to  dominate  fiction ;  disappearing  at 
times  from  the  stage  which  they  may 
have  occupied  too  exclusively,  but 
always  reappearing  in  due  season,  — 
the  hero  in  the  novel  of  romance, 
the  wanderer  in  the  novel  of  adven 
ture.  These  figures  are  as  constant 
235 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

in  fiction  as  they  were  in  mythology  ; 
from  the  days  of  the  earliest  Greek 
and  Oriental  stories  to  these  days 
of  Stevenson  and  Barrie,  they  have 
never  lost  their  hold  on  the  imagi 
nation  of  the  race.  When  the  sense 
of  reality  was  feeble,  these  figures  be 
came  fantastic,  and  even  ridiculous  ; 
but  this  false  art  was  the  product  of 
an  unregulated,  not  of  an  illegiti 
mate,  exercise  of  the  imagination ; 
and  while  <c  Don  Quixote  "  destroyed 
the  old  romance  of  chivalry,  it  left 
the  instinct  which  produced  that  ro 
mance  untouched.  As  the  sense  of 
reality  becomes  more  exacting  and 
more  general,  the  action  of  the  ima 
gination  is  more  carefully  regulated ; 
but  it  is  not  diminished,  either  in 
volume  or  in  potency.  Men  have 
not  lost  the  power  of  individual  ac 
tion  because  society  has  become  so 
236 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

highly  developed,  and  the  multipli 
cation  of  the  police  has  not  materi 
ally  reduced  the  tragic  possibilities 
of  life.  There  is  more  accurate  and 
more  extensive  knowledge  of  envi 
ronment  than  ever  before  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  race,  but  temperament, 
impulse,  and  passion  remain  as  pow 
erful  as  they  were  in  primitive  men ; 
and  tragedy  finds  its  materials  in 
temperament,  impulse,  and  passion, 
much  more  frequently  than  in  objec 
tive  conditions  and  circumstances. 

The  soul  of  man  has  passed 
through  a  great  education,  and  has 
immensely  profited  by  it;  but  its 
elemental  qualities  and  forces  remain 
unchanged.  Two  things  men  have 
always  craved,  —  to  come  to  close 
quarters  with  life,  and  to  do  some 
thing  positive  and  substantial.  Self- 
expression  is  the  prime  need  of  human 
237 


The  Culture  Element  in  Fiction. 

nature  ;  it  must  know,  act,  and  suf 
fer  by  virtue  of  its  deepest  instincts. 
The  greater  and  richer  that  nature, 
the  deeper  will  be  its  need  of  see 
ing  life  on  many  sides,  of  sharing  in 
many  kinds  of  experience,  of  con 
tending  with  multiform  difficulties. 
To  drink  deeply  of  the  cup  of  life, 
at  whatever  cost,  appears  to  be  the 
insatiable  desire  of  the  most  richly 
endowed  men  and  women  ;  and  with 
such  natures  the  impulse  is  to  seek, 
not  to  shun,  experience.  And  that 
which  to  the  elect  men  and  women 
of  the  race  is  necessary  and  possible 
is  not  only  comprehensible  to  those 
who  cannot  possess  it :  it  is  power 
fully  and  permanently  attractive. 
There  is  a  spell  in  it  which  the  dull 
est  mortal  does  not  wholly  escape.1 

1  Reprinted  in  part,   by  permission,   from  the 
«'  Forum.'1 

238 


Chapter  XXI. 
Culture  through  Action. 

TT  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the 
four  men  who  have  been  ac 
cepted  as  the  greatest  writers  who 
have  yet  appeared,  used  either  the 
epic  or  the  dramatic  form.  It  can 
hardly  have  been  accidental  that 
Homer  and  Dante  gave  their  great 
est  work  the  epic  form,  and  that 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe  were  in 
their  most  fortunate  moments  dram 
atists.  There  must  have  been  some 
reason  in  the  nature  of  things  for 
this  choice  of  two  literary  forms 
which,  differing  widely  in  other  re 
spects,  have  this  in  common,  that 
239 


Culture  through  Action. 

they  represent  life  in  action.  They 
are  very  largely  objective  ;  they  por 
tray  events,  conditions,  and  deeds 
which  have  passed  beyond  the  stage 
of  thought  and  have  involved  the 
thinker  in  the  actual  historical  world 
of  vital  relationships  and  dramatic 
sequence.  The  lyric  poet  may  sing, 
if  it  pleases  him,  like  a  bird  in  the 
recesses  of  a  garden,  far  from  the 
noise  and  dust  of  the  highway  and 
the  clamour  of  men  in  the  competi 
tions  of  trade  and  work ;  but  the 
epic  or  dramatic  poet  must  find  his 
theme  and  his  inspiration  in  the  stir 
and  movement  of  men  in  social  rela 
tions.  He  deals,  not  with  the  subjec 
tive,  but  with  the  objective  man ; 
with  the  man  whose  dreams  are  no 
longer  visions  of  the  imagination, 
but  are  becoming  incorporate  in 
some  external  order ;  whose  passions 
240 


Culture  through  Action. 

are  no  longer  seething  within  him, 
but  are  working  themselves  out  in 
vital  consequences ;  whose  thought 
is  no  longer  purely  speculative,  but 
has  begun  to  give  form  and  shape  to 
laws,  habits,  or  institutions.  It  is  the 
revelation  of  the  human  spirit  in 
action  which  we  find  in  the  epic  and 
the  drama ;  the  inward  life  working 
itself  out  in  material  and  social  rela 
tions  ;  the  soul  of  the  man  becom 
ing,  so  to  speak,  externalised. 

The  epic,  as  illustrated  in  the 
"  Iliad"  and  "Odyssey,"  deals  with 
a  main  or  central  movement  in 
Greek  tradition ;  a  series  of  events 
which,  by  reason  of  their  nature  and 
prominence,  imbedded  themselves 
in  the  memory  of  the  Greek  race. 
These  events  are  described  in  narra 
tive  form,  with  episodes,  incidents, 
and  dialogues,  which  break  the  long 

16  241 


Culture  through  Action. 

story  and  relax  the  strain  of  at 
tention  from  time  to  time,  without 
interrupting  the  progress  of  the  nar 
rative.  There  are  heroes  whose 
figures  stand  out  in  the  long  story 
with  great  distinctness,  but  we  are 
interested  much  more  in  what  they 
do  than  in  what  they  are ;  for  in  the 
epic,  character  is  subordinate  to 
action.  In  the  dramas  of  Shake 
speare,  on  the  other  hand,  while 
action  is  more  constantly  employed 
and  is  thrown  into  bolder  relief,  our 
deepest  interest  centres  in  the  actors; 
the  action  is  no  longer  the  matter 
of  first  importance ;  it  is  significant 
mainly  because  it  involves  men  and 
women  not  only  in  the  chain  of  ex 
ternal  consequences,  but  also  in  the 
order  of  spiritual  sequences.  We 
are  deeply  stirred  by  our  perception 
of  the  intimate  connection  between 
242 


Culture  through  Action. 

the  possibilities  which  lie  sleeping 
in  the  individual  life,  and  the  tragic 
events  which  are  set  in  motion  when 
those  possibilities  are  realised  in 
action.  In  both  epic  and  drama 
men  are  seen,  not  in  their  subjective 
moods,  but  in  their  objective  strug 
gles  ;  not  in  the  detachment  of  the 
life  of  speculation  and  imagination, 
but  in  vital  association  and  relation 
with  society  in  its  order  and  institu 
tions.  With  many  differences,  both 
of  spirit  and  form,  the  epic  and  the 
drama  are  at  one  in  portraying  men 
in  that  ultimate  and  decisive  stage 
which  determines  individual  char 
acter  and  gives  history  its  direction 
and  significance. 

And  it  is  from  men  in  action  that 
much  of  the  deepest  truth  concern 
ing  life  and  character  has  come ;   in 
deed,  it  is  not  until  we  pass  out  of 
243 


Culture  through  Action. 

the  region  of  the  speculative,  the 
merely  potential,  that  the  word 
"character"  takes  on  that  tremendous 
meaning  with  which  thousands  of 
years  of  actual  happenings  have  in 
vested  it.  A  purely  ideal  world  — 
a  world  fashioned  wholly  apart  from 
the  realities  which  convey  definite, 
concrete  revelations  of  what  is  in  us 
and  in  our  world  —  would  neces 
sarily  be  an  unmoral  world.  The 
relationships  which  bind  men  to 
gether  and  give  human  intercourse 
such  depth  and  richness  spring  into 
being  only  when  they  are  actually 
entered  upon ;  they  could  never  be 
understood  or  foreseen  in  a  world  of 
pure  thought ;  nor  would  it  be  pos 
sible,  in  such  a  world,  to  realise  that 
reaction  of  the  deed  upon  the  doer 
which  creates  character,  nor  that  far- 
reaching  influence  of  the  deed  upon 
244 


Culture  through  Action. 

society,  and  the  sequence  of  events 
which  so  often  issues  in  tragedy  and 
from  which  history  derives  its  im 
mense  interest  and  meaning.  A 
world  which  stopped  short  of  reali 
sation  in  action  would  not  only  lose 
the  fathomless  dramatic  interest 
which  inheres  in  human  life,  but  it 
would  part  with  all  those  moral  im 
plications  of  the  integrity  and  per 
sistence  of  the  individual  soul,  its 
moral  quality  and  its  moral  respon 
sibility,  which  make  man  something 
different  from  the  dust  which  whirls 
about  him  on  the  highway,  or  the 
stone  over  which  he  stumbles. 
This  is  precisely  the  character  of 
those  speculative  systems  which 
deny  the  reality  of  action  and  sub 
stitute  the  idea  for  the  deed ;  such  a 
world  does  more  than  suffocate  the 
individual  soul ;  it  destroys  the  very 
245 


Culture  through  Action. 

meaning  of  life  by  robbing  it  of 
moral  order  and  meaning.  The  end 
of  such  a  conception  of  the  universe 
is  necessarily  annihilation,  and  its 
mood  is  necessarily  despair. 

<c  How  can  a  man  come  to  know 
himself?  "  asked  Goethe.  c<  Never 
by  thinking,  but  by  doing."  Now, 
this  knowledge  of  self  in  the  large 
sense  is  precisely  the  knowledge 
which  ripens  and  clarifies  us,  which 
gives  us  sanity,  repose,  and  power. 
To  know  what  is  in  humanity  and 
what  life  means  to  humanity,  we 
must  study  humanity  in  its  active, 
not  in  its  passive,  moods ;  in  the 
hours  when  it  is  doing,  not  think 
ing.  Sooner  or  later  all  its  thinking 
which  has  any  reality  in  it  passes 
on  into  action.  The  emotion,  pas 
sion,  thought,  impulse,  which  never 
gets  beyond  the  subjective  stage,  dies 
246 


Culture  through  Action. 

before  birth  ;  and  all  those  philoso 
phies  which  urge  abstinence  from 
action  would  cut  the  plant  of  life  at 
the  root;  they  are,  in  the  last  analy 
sis,  pleas  for  suicide.  Men  really 
live  only  as  they  freely  express  them 
selves  through  thought,  emotion, 
and  action.  They  get  at  the  deep 
est  truth  and  enter  into  the  deepest 
relationships  only  as  they  act.  In 
action  involves  something  more 
than  the  disease  and  decay  of  certain 
faculties;  it  involves  the  deformity 
of  arrested  development,  and  failure 
to  enter  into  that  larger  world  of 
truth  which  is  open  to  those  races 
alone  which  live  a  whole  life.  It  is 
for  this  reason  that  the  drama  must 
always  hold  the  first  place  among 
those  forms  which  the  art  of  litera 
ture  has  perfected ;  it  is  for  this 
reason  that  Homer,  Dante,  Shake- 
247 


Culture  through  Action. 

speare,  and  Goethe,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  chose  those  forms 
of  expression  which  are  specially 
adapted  to  represent  and  illustrate 
life  in  action ;  it  is  for  this  reason, 
among  others,  that  these  writers 
must  always  play  so  great  a  part 
/in  the  work  of  educating  the  race. 
Culture  is,  above  all  things,  real  and 
vital;  knowledge  may  deal  with 
abstractions  and  unrelated  bits  of 
fact,  but  culture  must  always  fasten 
upon  those  things  which  are  signi 
ficant  in  a  spiritual  order.  It  has 
to  do  with  the  knowledge  which 
may  become  incorporate  in  a  man's 
nature,  and  with  that  knowledge  es 
pecially  which  has  come  to  human 
ity  through  action.  It  is  this  deeper 
knowledge  which  holds  a  lighted  torch 
aloft  in  the  deepest  recesses  of  the 
soul,  or  over  those  abysses  of  possi- 
248 


Culture  through  Action. 

ble  experience  which  open  on  all 
sides  about  every  man,  which  is  to 
be  found  in  the  pages  of  Homer, 
Dante,  Shakespeare,  and  Goethe,  and 
of  all  those  great  artists  who  have 
seen  men  in  those  decisive  and  sig 
nificant  moments  when  they  strike 
into  the  movement  of  history,  or, 
through  their  deeds  and  sufferings, 
the  order  of  life  suddenly  shines 
forth. 


249 


Chapter  XXII. 
The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

IDEALISM  has  so  often  been  as 
sociated  in  recent  years  with  vague 
ness  of  thought,  slovenly  construction, 
and  a  weak  sentimentalism,  that  it 
has  been  discredited,  even  among  those 
who  have  recognised  the  reality  be 
hind  it  and  the  great  place  it  must 
hold  in  all  rich  and  noble  living.  It 
is  the  misfortune  of  what  is  called 
Idealism,  that,  like  other  spiritual 
principles,  it  attracts  those  who  mis 
take  the  longings  of  unintelligent  dis 
content  for  aspiration,  or  the  changing 
outlines  of  vapory  fancies  for  the  firm 
and  consistent  form  and  shape  of  real 
250 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

conceptions  deeply  realised  in  the  im 
agination.  Idealism  has  suffered  much 
at  the  hands  of  feeble  practition 
ers  who  have  substituted  irrational 
dreams  for  those  far-reaching  visions 
and  those  penetrating  insights  which 
are  characteristic  of  its  true  use  and 
illustration  in  the  arts.  The  height 
of  the  reaction  so  vigorously  and  im 
pressively  illustrated  in  a  great  group 
of  modern  realistic  works  is  due 
largely  to  the  weakness  and  extrava 
gance  of  the  idealistic  movement. 
When  sentiment  is  exchanged  for  its 
corrupting  counterfeit,  sentimentalism, 
and  clear  and  definite  thinking  gives 
place  to  vague  and  elusive  emotions 
and  fancies,  reaction  is  not  only  inevi 
table  but  wholesome  ;  the  instinct  for 
sanity  in  men  will  always  prevent 
them  from  becoming  mere  dreamers 
and  star-gazers. 

25* 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

The  true  Idealist  has  his  feet  firmly 
planted  on  reality,  and  his  idealism 
discloses  itself  not  in  a  disposition  to 
dream  dreams  and  see  visions,  but  in 
the  largeness  of  a  vision  which  sees 
realities  in  the  totality  of  their  rela 
tions  and  not  merely  in  their  obvious 
and  superficial  relations.  It  is  a  great 
mistake  to  discern  in  men  nothing 
more  substantial  than  that  movement 
of  hopes  and  longings  which  is  so 
often  mistaken  for  aspiration ;  it  is 
equally  a  mistake  to  discern  in  men 
nothing  more  enduring  and  aspiring 
than  the  animal  nature ;  either  report, 
standing  by  itself,  would  be  funda 
mentally  untrue.  Man  is  an  animal ; 
but  he  is  an  animal  with  a  soul,  and 
the  sane  view  of  him  takes  both  body 
and  soul  into  account.  The  defect  of 
a  good  deal  of  current  Realism  lies  in 
its  lack  of  veracity ;  it  is  essentially 
252 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

untrue,  and  it  is,  therefore,  funda 
mentally  unreal.  The  love  of  truth, 
the  passion  for  the  fact,  the  determi 
nation  to  follow  life  wherever  life 
leads,  are  noble,  artistic  instincts,  and 
have  borne  noble  fruit;  but  what  is 
often  called  Realism  has  suffered  quite 
as  much  as  Idealism  from  weak  practi 
tioners,  and  stands  quite  as  much  in 
need  of  rectification  and  restatement. 

The  essence  of  Idealism  is  the  ap 
plication  of  the  imagination  to  reali 
ties  ;  it  is  not  a  play  of  fancy,  a  golden 
vision  arbitrarily  projected  upon  the 
clouds  and  treated  as  if  it  had  an  ob 
jective  existence.  Goethe,  who  had 
such  a  vigorous  hold  upon  the  reali 
ties  of  existence,  and  who  had  also  an 
artist's  horror  of  mere  abstractions, 
touched  the  heart  of  the  matter  when 
he  defined  the  Ideal  as  the  comple 
tion  of  the  real.  In  this  simple  but 
253 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

luminous  statement  he  condensed 
the  faith  and  practice  not  only  of 
the  greater  artists  of  every  age,  but 
of  the  greater  thinkers  as  well.  In 
the  order  of  life  there  can  be  no  real 
break  between  things  as  they  now  ex 
ist  and  things  as  they  will  exist  in 
the  remotest  future ;  the  future  can 
not  contradict  the  present,  nor  falsify 
it ;  for  the  future  must  be  the  realisa 
tion  of  the  full  possibilities  of  the 
present.  The  present  is  related  to  it 
as  the  seed  is  related  to  the  flower  and 
fruit  in  which  its  development  cul 
minates.  There  are  vast  changes  of 
form  and  dimension  between  the  seed 
and  the  tree  hanging  ripe  with  fruit, 
but  there  is  no  contradiction  between 
the  germ  and  its  final  unfolding. 

A  rigid  Realism,  however,  sees  in 
the  seed  nothing  but  its  present  hard 
ness,  littleness,  ugliness ;   a  true  and 
254 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

rational  Idealism  sees  all  these  things, 
but  it  sees  also  not  only  appearances 
but  potentialities  ;  or,  to  recall  another 
of  Goethe's  phrases,  it  sees  the  object 
whole. 

To  see  life  clearly  and  to  see  it 
whole  is  not  only  to  see  distinctly  the 
obvious  facts  of  life,  but  to  see  these 
facts  in  sequence  and  order ;  in  other 
words,  to  explain  and  interpret  them. 
The  power  to  do  this  is  one  of  the 
signs  of  a  great  imagination ;  and,  other 
things  being  equal,  the  rank  of  a 
work  of  art  may,  in  the  last  analysis, 
be  determined  by  the  clearness  and 
veracity  with  which  explanation  and 
interpretation  are  suggested.  Homer 
is,  for  this  reason,  the  foremost  writer 
of  the  Greek  race.  He  is  wholly  free 
from  any  purpose  to  give  ethical  in 
struction  ;  he  is  absolutely  delivered 
from  the  temptation  to  didacticism  ; 
2S5 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

and  yet  he  reveals  to  us  the  secret  of 
the  temperament  and  genius  of  his 
race.  And  he  does  this  because  he 
sees  in  his  race  the  potentialities  of 
the  seed ;  the  vitality,  beauty,  fra 
grance,  and  growth  which  lie  enfolded 
in  its  tiny  and  unpromising  substance. 
If  the  reality  of  a  thing  is  not  so 
much  its  appearance  as  the  totality 
of  that  which  is  to  issue  out  of  it, 
then  nothing  can  be  truly  seen  with 
out  the  use  of  the  imagination.  All 
that  the  Idealist  asks  is  that  life  shall 
be  seen  not  only  with  his  eyes  but 
with  his  imagination.  His  descriptions 
are  accurate,  but  they  are  also  vital ; 
they  give  us  the  thing  not  only 
as  it  looked  standing  by  itself,  but 
as  it  appeared  in  the  complete  life 
of  which  it  was  a  part ;  he  makes 
us  see  the  physical  side  of  the  fact 
with  great  distinctness,  but  he  makes 
256 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

us  see  its  spiritual  side  as  well.  As  a 
result,  there  is  left  in  our  minds  by 
the  intelligent  reading  of  Homer  a 
clear  impression  of  the  spiritual,  polit 
ical,  and  social  aptitudes  and  char 
acteristics  of  the  Greek  people  of  his 
age,  —  an  impression  which  no  ex 
act  report  of  mere  appearances  could 
have  conveyed ;  an  impression  which 
is  due  to  the  constant  play  of  the 
poet's  imagination  upon  the  facts  with 
which  he  is  dealing. 

This  is  true  Idealism ;  but  it  is 
also  true  Realism.  It  is  not  only  the 
fact,  but  the  truth.  The  fact  may 
be  observed,  but  the  truth  must  be 
discerned  by  insight,  —  it  is  not 
within  the  range  of  mere  observation  ; 
and  it  is  this  insight,  this  discern 
ment  of  realities  in  their  relation  to 
the  whole  order  of  things,  which  char 
acterises  true  Idealism,  and  which 
17  257 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

makes  all  the  greater  writers  Idealists 
in  the  fundamental  if  not  in  the  tech 
nical  sense.  Tolstoi  has  often  been 
called  a  Realist  by  those  who  are 
eager  to  label  everything  and  every 
body  succinctly ;  but  Tolstoi  is  one 
of  the  representative  Idealists  of  his 
time,  and  his  "  Master  and  Man  "  is 
one  of  the  most  touching  and  sincere 
bits  of  true  Idealism  which  has  been 
given  the  world  for  many  a  day. 

There  is  nothing  which  needs  such 
constant  reinforcement  as  this  faculty 
of  seeing  things  in  their  totality ;  for 
we  are  largely  at  the  mercy  of  the 
hour  unless  we  invoke  the  aid  of  the 
imagination  to  set  the  appearances  of 
the  moment  in  their  large  relations. 
To  the  man  who  sees  things  as  they 
rush  like  a  stream  before  him,  there  is 
no  order,  progression,  or  intelligent 
movement  in  human  affairs ;  but  to 

258 


The  Interpretation  of  Idealism. 

the  student  who  brings  to  the  study 
of  current  events  wide  and  deep 
knowledge  of  the  great  historic  move 
ments,  these  apparently  unrelated  phe 
nomena  disclose  the  most  intimate 
inter-relations  and  connections.  The 
most  despairing  pessimism  would  be 
born  in  the  heart  of  the  man  who 
should  be  fated  to  see  to-day  apart 
from  yesterday  and  to-morrow ;  a 
rational  and  inspiring  hope  may  be 
born  in  the  soul  of  the  man  who  sees 
the  day  as  part  of  the  year  and  the 
year  as  part  of  the  century.  The  great 
writers  are  a  refuge  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  moment,  because  they  set 
the  events  of  life  in  a  fundamental 
order,  and  make  us  aware  of  the  finer 
potentialities  of  our  race.  They  are 
Idealists  in  the  breadth  of  their  vision 
and  the  nobility  of  the  interpretation 
of  events  which  they  offer  us. 
259 


Chapter  XXIII. 
The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

'  I HHESE  writers  are  also,  by  virtue 
of  the  faculty  of  discerning  the 
interior  relations  of  appearances  and 
events,  the  expositors  of  that  ultimate 
Idealism  which  not  only  discovers  the 
possibility  of  the  whole  in  the  parts, 
of  the  perfect  in  the  imperfect,  but 
which  discovers  the  whole,  the  com 
plete  and  the  perfect,  and  brings  each 
before  us  in  some  noble  form.  The 
reality  of  the  Ideal  as  Plato  saw  it  is 
by  no  means  universally  accepted  as  a 
philosophical  conclusion,  but  all  high- 
minded  men  and  women  accept  it  as  a 
rule  of  life.  Idealism  is  wrought  into 
260 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

the  very  fibre  of  the  race,  and  is  as 
indestructible  as  the  imagination  in 
which  it  has  its  roots.  Deep  in  the 
heart  of  humanity  lies  the  unshak 
able  faith  in  its  essential  divinity,  and 
in  the  reality  of  its  highest  hopes  of 
development  and  attainment.  The 
failure  of  noble  schemes,  the  decline 
of  enthusiasms,  the  fading  of  visions 
and  dreams  which  seemed  to  have  the 
luminous  constancy  of  fixed  stars, 
breed  temporary  depressions  and  pass 
ing  moods  of  scepticism  and  despair ; 
but  the  spiritual  vitality  of  the  race 
always  reasserts  itself,  and  faith  returns 
after  every  disaster  or  disillusion. 

Indeed,  as  the  race  grows  older  and 
masters  more  and  more  a  knowledge 
of  its  conditions,  the  impression  of 
the  essential  greatness  of  the  experi 
ence  we  call  life  deepens  in  the  finer 
spirits.  It  becomes  clear  that  the 
261 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

end  towards  which  the  hopes  of  the 
world  have  always  moved  is  farther 
off  than  it  seemed  to  the  earlier  gen 
erations  ;  that  the  process  of  spiritual 
and  social  evolution  is  longer  and 
more  painful ;  that  the  universe  is 
vaster  and  more  wonderful  than  the 
vision  of  it  which  formed  in  the  im 
agination  of  thinkers  and  poets ;  in  a 
word,  that  the  education  which  is 
being  imparted  to  humanity  by  the 
very  structure  of  the  conditions  under 
which  it  lives  grows  more  severe, 
prolonged,  and  exacting  as  its  methods 
and  processes  become  more  clear. 
The  broadening  of  the  field  of  obser 
vation  has  steadily  deepened  the  im 
pression  of  the  magnitude  and  majesty 
of  the  physical  order  by  which  men 
are  surrounded  ;  and  the  fuller  knowl 
edge  of  what  is  in  human  experience 
has  steadily  deepened  the  impression 
262 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

of  the  almost  tragic  greatness  of  the 
lot  of  men.  The  disappointments  of 
the  race  have  been  largely  due  to  its 
inadequate  conception  of  its  own  pos 
sibilities  ;  its  disillusions  have  been 
like  the  fading  of  the  mirage  which 
simulates  against  the  near  horizon 
that  which  lies  long  leagues  away. 
These  disappointments  and  disillu^ 
sions,  as  Browning  saw  clearly,  are 
essential  parts  of  an  education  which 
leads  the  race  step  by  step  from 
smaller  to  larger  ideas,  from  nearer 
and  easier  to  more  remote  and  diffi 
cult  attainments. 

The  disappointment  which  comes 
with  the  completion  of  every  piece  of 
work  well  and  wisely  done  does  not 
arise  from  the  futility  of  the  work,  as 
the  pessimists  tell  us,  but  from  its 
inadequacy  to  express  entirely  the 
thought  and  force  of  the  man  who 
263 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

has  striven  to  express  himself  com 
pletely  in  a  material  which,  however 
masterfully  used,  can  never  give  its 
ultimate  form  to  a  spiritual  concep 
tion.  It  is  not  an  evidence  of  failure, 
but  a  prophecy  of  greater  achieve 
ment.  A  world  in  which  the  work 
was  as  great  as  the  worker,  the  piece 
of  art  as  the  artist,  would  be  a  finished 
world  in  more  senses  than  one ;  a 
world  in  which  all  work  is  inadequate 
to  contain  the  energy  of  the  worker, 
all  art  insufficient  to  express  the  soul 
of  the  artist,  is  necessarily  a  prophetic 
world,  bearing  witness  to  the  presence 
of  a  creative  force  in  workers  and 
artists  immeasurably  beyond  the  ca 
pacity  of  any  perishable  material  to 
receive  or  to  preserve. 

A    rational    Idealism   is,  therefore, 
not  only  indestructible  in  a  race  which 
does  not  violate  the  laws  of  life,  but 
264 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

is  instilled  into  the  higher  order  of 
minds  by  the  order  of  life  as  revealed 
by  science,  history,  and  the  arts. 
And  this  idealistic  tendency  is  not 
only  the  poetic  temper ;  it  is  the  hope 
and  safeguard  of  society.  The  real 
perils  of  the  race  are  not  material ;  they 
are  always  spiritual ;  and  no  peril 
could  be  greater  than  the  loss  of  faith 
and  hope  in  the  possibility  of  attain 
ing  the  best  things.  If  men  are  ever 
bereft  of  their  instinctive  or  rational 
conviction  that  they  have  the  power 
ultimately  to  bring  institutions  of  all 
kinds  into  harmony  with  their  higher 
conceptions,  they  will  sink  into  the 
lethargy  of  despair  or  the  slough  of 
sensualism.  The  belief  in  the  reality 
of  the  Ideal  in  personal  and  social  life 
is  not  only  the  joy  and  inspiration  of 
the  poet  and  thinker ;  it  is  also  the 
salvation  of  the  race.  It  is  imperish- 
265 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

able,  because  it  is  the  product  of  the 
play  of  the  imagination  on  the  realities 
of  life  ;  and  until  the  imagination  per 
ishes,  the  vision  of  the  ultimate  per 
fection  will  form  and  reform  in  the 
heart  of  every  generation.  It  is  the 
inspiration  of  every  art,  the  end  of 
every  noble  occupation,  the  secret 
hope  of  every  fine  character. 

Idealism  in  this  sense,  not  as  the 
product  of  an  easy  and  ignorant  op 
timism  turning  away  from  the  facts  of 
life,  but  as  the  product  of  a  large  and 
spiritual  dealing  with  those  facts,  is 
the  very  soul,  not  only  of  noble  living, 
but  of  those  noble  expressions  of  life 
which  the  greater  writers  have  given 
us.  They  disclose  wide  diversity  of 
gifts,  but  they  have  this  in  common,  — 
that,  in  discovering  to  us  the  spiritual 
order  of  the  facts  of  life,  they  disclose 
also  those  ideal  figures  which  the  race 
266 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

accepts  as  embodiments  of  its  secrets, 
hopes,  and  aims.  It  is  a  significant 
fact  that,  in  portraying  the  Greek  of 
his  time,  Homer  has  given  us  also 
the  ideal  Greek  and  the  Greek  ideals. 
His  insight  went  to  the  soul  of  the 
persons  he  described,  and  he  struck 
into  that  spiritual  order  in  which  the 
ideal  is  not  only  a  reality,  but,  in  a 
sense,  the  only  reality. 

Cervantes,  in  the  very  act  of  de 
stroying  a  false  Idealism,  convention 
ally  conceived  and  treated,  made  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  revelations  of  a 
true  Idealism  which  the  world  has  yet 
received.  Shakespeare's  presentation 
of  the  facts  of  life  is,  on  the  whole, 
the  most  comprehensive  and  impres 
sive  which  has  yet  been  made ;  in  the 
disclosure  of  tragic  elements  it  is  un 
surpassed;  and  yet  what  a  host  of 
ideal  figures  move  through  the  plays 
267 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

and  invest  them  with  a  light  beyond 
the  glow  of  art!  In  the  Forest  of 
Arden  and  on  Prospero's  Island  there 
live,  beyond  the  touch  of  time  and 
the  vicissitudes  of  fate,  those  gracious 
and  beautiful  spirits  in  whom  the  race 
sees  its  noblest  hopes  come  true, 
its  instinctive  faith  in  itself  justified. 
These  spirits  are  not  airy  nothings, 
woven  of  the  unsubstantial  gossamer 
of  which  dreams  are  made ;  they  are 
born  of  a  deep  insight  into  the  possi 
bilities  of  the  soul,  and  a  rational  faith 
in  their  reality.  Prospero  is  as  real  as 
Trinculo,  and  Rosalind  as  true  as 
Cressida.  These  ideal  persons  are 
not  necessarily  fortunate  in  their  sur 
roundings  or  happy  in  their  lot ;  they 
are  simply  perfect  in  their  develop 
ment  of  a  type.  They  are  not  ab 
normal  beings,  rising  above  normal 
conditions ;  they  are  normal  beings, 
268 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

rising  above  abnormal  conditions. 
They  stand  for  wholeness  amid  frag 
ments,  for  perfection  amid  imperfec 
tion  ;  but  the  very  imperfection  and 
fragmentariness  by  which  they  are 
surrounded  predicts  their  coming  and 
affirms  their  reality. 

In  the  rounded  and  developed  na 
ture  there  must  be  a  deep  vein  of  the 
Idealism  which  grows  out  of  the  vision 
of  things  in  their  large  relations  —  out 
of  a  view  of  men  ample  enough  to 
discern  not  only  what  they  are  at  this 
stage  of  development,  but  what  they 
may  become  when  development  has 
been  completed.  Nothing  is  more 
essential  than  the  courage,  the  joy, 
and  the  insight  which  grow  out  of 
such  an  Idealism,  and  no  spiritual 
possession  is  more  easily  lost.  The 
spiritual  depression  of  a  reactionary 
period,  the  routine  of  work,  the  im- 
269 


The  Vision  of  Perfection. 

mersion  in  the  stream  of  events,  the 
decline  of  moral  energy,  conspire  to 
blight  this  noble  use  of  the  imagina 
tion,  and  to  chill  the  faith  which  makes 
creative  living  and  working  possible. 
The  familiar  companionship  of  the 
great  Idealists  is  one  of  the  greatest 
resources  against  the  paralysis  of  this 
faith  and  the  decay  of  this  faculty. 


270 


Chapter  XXIV. 
Retrospect. 

HP  HE  books  of  four  great  writers 
have  been  used  almost  exclusively 
by  way  of  illustration  throughout  this 
discussion  of  the  relation  of  books  to 
culture.  This  limited  selection  may 
have  seemed  at  times  too  narrow  and 
rigid ;  it  may  have  conveyed  an  im 
pression  of  insensibility  to  the  vast 
range  and  the  great  variety  of  literary 
forms  and  products,  and  of  indiffer 
ence  to  contemporary  writing.  It 
needs  to  be  said,  therefore,  that  the 
constant  reference  to  Homer,  Dante, 
Shakespeare,  and  Goethe  has  been 
made  for  the  sake  of  clearness  and 
271 


Retrospect. 

force  of  illustration,  and  not,  in  any 
sense,  as  applying  an  exclusive  princi 
ple  of  selection.  The  books  of  life  are 
to  be  found  in  every  language,  and  are 
the  product  of  almost  every  age ;  and 
no  one  attains  genuine  culture  who 
does  not,  through  them,  make  him 
self  familiar  with  the  life  of  each  suc 
cessive  generation.  To  be  ignorant 
of  the  thought  and  art  of  one's  time 
involves  a  narrowness  of  intelligence 
which  is  inconsistent  with  the  maturity 
of  taste  and  ripeness  of  nature  which 
have  been  emphasised  in  these  chap 
ters  as  the  highest  and  finest  fruits  of 
culture.  The  more  generous  a  man's 
culture  becomes,  the  more  catholic 
becomes  his  taste  and  the  keener  his 
insight.  The  man  of  highest  intelli 
gence  will  be  the  first  to  recognise  the 
fresh  touch,  the  new  point  of  view, 
the  broader  thought.  He  will  bring 
272 


Retrospect. 

to  the  books  of  his  own  time  not  only 
a  trained  instinct  for  sound  work,  but 
a  deep  sympathy  with  the  latest  effort 
of  the  human  spirit  to  express  itself  in 
new  forms.  So  deep  and  real  will  be 
his  feeling  for  life  that  he  will  be  eager 
to  understand  and  possess  every  fresh 
manifestation  of  that  life.  However 
novel  and  unconventional  the  new 
form  may  be,  it  will  not  make  its 
appeal  to  him  in  vain. 

It  remains  true,  however,  that  liter 
ature  is  a  universal  art,  expressive  and 
interpretative  of  the  spirit  of  humanity, 
and  that  no  man  can  make  full  ac 
quaintance  with  that  spirit  who  fails 
to  make  companionship  with  its  great 
est  masters  and  interpreters.  The 
appeal  of  contemporary  books  is  so 
constant  and  urgent  that  it  stands  in 
small  need  of  emphasis  ;  but  the  claims 
of  the  rich  and  splendid  literature  of 

18  273 


Retrospect. 

the  past  are  often  slighted  or  ignored. 
The  supreme  masters  of  an  art  ought 
to  be  the  objects  of  constant  study 
and  thought;  there  is  more  of  life, 
truth,  and  beauty  in  them  than  in 
their  fellow-artists  of  narrower  range 
of  experience  and  artistic  achievement. 
For  this  reason  these  greatest  inter 
preters  of  the  human  spirit  are  in  no 
sense  exclusively  of  the  past;  they 
are  of  the  present  and  the  future. 
To  know  them  is  not  only  to  know 
the  particular  periods  in  which  they 
wrote,  but  to  know  our  own  period 
in  the  deepest  sense.  No  man  can 
better  prepare  himself  to  enter  into 
the  formative  life  of  his  time  than  by 
thoroughly  familiarising  himself  with 
the  greatest  books  of  the  past ;  for  in 
these  are  revealed,  not  the  secrets  of 
past  forms  of  life,  but  the  secrets  of 
that  spirit  whose  historic  life  is  one 
274 


Retrospect. 

unbroken  revelation  of  its  nature  and 
destiny.  It  is,  therefore,  no  disparage 
ment  of  the  great  company  of  writers 
who  have  been  the  secretaries  of  the 
race  in  all  ages  to  fasten  attention 
upon  the  claims  of  the  four  men  of 
genius  whom  the  world  has  accepted 
as  the  supreme  masters  of  the  art  of 
literature,  and  to  point  out  again  the 
immense  importance  of  their  works 
in  the  educational  life  of  the  indi 
vidual  and  of  society. 

It  cannot  be  said  too  often  that 
literature  is  the  product  of  the  contin 
uous  spiritual  activity  of  the  race  ;  that 
it  cannot  be  arbitrarily  divided  into 
periods  save  for  mere  convenience  of 
arrangement;  and  that  it  is  impossi 
ble  to  understand  and  value  its  latest 
products  unless  one  is  able  to  find 
their  place  and  discern  their  value  in  the 
order  of  a  spiritual  development.  To 
275 


Retrospect. 

secure  an  adequate  impression  of  this 
highest  expression  of  the  human  spirit 
one  must  keep  in  view  the  work  of 
the  past  quite  as  definitely  as  the 
work  of  the  present ;  in  such  a  broad 
survey  there  is  a  constant  deliverance 
from  the  rashness  of  contemporary 
judgments,  and  from  that  narrowness 
of  feeling  which  limits  one's  vital  con 
tact  with  the  life  of  the  race  to  the 
products  of  a  single  brief  period. 

In  any  attempt  to  indicate  the  fun 
damental  significance  of  the  art  of 
literature  in  the  educational  develop 
ment  of  the  individual  and  of  society 
there  must  also  be  a  certain  repetition 
of  idea  and  of  illustration.  This  limi 
tation,  if  it  be  a  limitation,  is  inherent 
in  the  very  nature  of  the  undertaking. 
Literature  is,  for  purposes  of  comment 
and  exposition,  practically  inexhaust 
ible  ;  its  themes  are  as  varied  and  as 
276 


Retrospect. 

numerous  as  the  objects  upon  which 
the  mind  can  fasten  and  about  which 
the  imagination  can  play.  But  while 
its  forms  and  products  are  almost 
without  number,  this  magnificent 
growth  has,  in  the  last  analysis,  a 
single  root,  and  in  these  brief  chapters 
the  endeavour  has  been  made,  very 
inadequately,  to  bring  the  mind  to 
this  deep  and  hidden  unity  of  life 
and  art.  Information,  instruction, 
delight,  flow  in  a  thousand  rivulets 
from  as  many  books,  but  there  is  a 
spring  of  life  which  feeds  all  these 
separate  streams.  From  that  unseen 
source  flows  the  vitality  which  has 
given  power  and  freshness  to  a  host 
of  noble  works ;  from  that  source 
vitality  also  flows  into  every  mind 
open  to  its  incoming.  A  rich  intel 
lectual  life  is  characterised  not  so  much 
by  profusion  of  ideas  as  by  the  appli- 
277 


Retrospect. 

cation  of  a  few  formative  ideas  to  life ; 
not  so  much  by  multiplicity  of  de 
tached  thoughts  as  by  the  habit  of 
thinking.  The  genius  of  Carlyle  is 
evidenced  not  by  prodigal  growth  of 
ideas,  but  by  an  impressive  interpre 
tation  of  life  through  the  application 
to  all  its  phenomena  of  a  few  ideas  of 
great  depth  and  range.  And  this  is 
true  of  all  the  great  writers  who  have 
given  us  fresh  views  of  life  from  some 
central  and  commanding  height  rather 
than  a  succession  of  glimpses  or  out 
looks  from  a  great  number  of  points. 
The  closer  the  approach  to  the  central 
force  behind  any  course  of  develop 
ment,  the  fewer  in  number  are  the 
elements  involved.  The  rootage  of 
literature  in  the  spiritual  nature  and 
experience  of  the  race  is  the  funda 
mental  fact  not  only  in  the  history  of 
this  rich  and  splendid  art,  but  in  its 

278 


Retrospect. 

relation  to  culture.  From  this  root 
age  flows  the  vitality  which  imparts 
immortality  to  its  noblest  products, 
and  which  supplies  an  educational 
element  unrivalled  in  its  enriching 
and  enlarging  quality. 


279 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN     INITIAL    FINE    OF    25    CENTS 

WILL   BE   ASSESSED    FOR    FAII  nr.tr  ^— 


Qo 

Z.Q 

g^ 


It 

So 


CO 


CM 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CDSSlflSMDS 


r 


X" 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


